"Give me a BUMP Vasily, one BUMP only"
Enough of that. I have spent hours today trying to attribute a flash effect to the lightning strikes, with no luck.
I have mananged, as a side effect of testing, to make lightning strikes last a little longer and give a flicker/multiple strike effect.
As I could not attribute a flash of light to the strike, I thought about a workaround and this led me to investigate the fog settings/tga. I was thinking that as lightning only strikes in SH3 when you have medium/heavy fog etc, that I could edit the Fog.tga file and incorporate my 'flash' in there. I would leave the fog.tga as is but replace the 4 x lightning.tga, maybe 2 new bolts & 2 as flash effect fog. This would give the appearance of a lightning strike in the distance.
Good thinking I thought......until I opened the fog.tga. It's bloody blank

no detail in it at all.
This is driving me insane. I hate to think what GW/NYGM modders go through.(I have new found appreciation

)
I really need some explaination regarding this matter, either attributing light to a bolt of lightning or editing the fog.tga.(note I did try replacing fog.tga with a cloud render with no luck). I know SH3 uses colours in a weird way but I can't find anything specific to this problem in the forum.
I may not be able to achieve what I set out to do but at the end of this, I will have new lightning graphics and a more realistic (in my opinion) strike setting.
If anyone can help, please do.
Edit @ Reece
If I can't get this to work, then I will post the new Lightning bolts. I have taken into account what you said and have actually made 2 with your suggestions and 2 with more 'exotic' effects.(SH3 uses each randomly from what I can tell)