endless-days

Hello all, I am currently working on a time cycle/lighting/particle/weather mod to clear things up a bit from the current extremes in variation which distract and annoy me at times. i've made 3 such mods before but this one has been a steep learning curve, i've got to where i want it to be except now i'm stumped [for endless days] on modifying or disabling the lightning effects - not so much the bolts themselves [can be removed by deleting it's texture .dds] but the light flashes over the whole map. i've tried modifying various related files and values in the materials/particles/shaders + shader cache/sprites/textures/worlds folders, aswell as using the SDK 1.4 editor all to no avail. the process is: i restart game from windows and load to a point in game where the undesired effect is, which has instantly worked for sky/particle/light mods, but i am not sure if the weather cycle is built in to save and may need some time cycling to see the effect of mod? [i'm expecting instant results when testing] ...any would be replies should note i am NOT a programmer, my methods are to examine/modify readable .ini's etc, and test ingame the effects by a process of trial and error. in it's current state, i barely even want to play the game let alone release the mod, especially the constant lightning sometimes when it's snowing [even in unmodded game] as it's a rare event in the real world...