Kev,
I see you like to see a bright flash. I do have one present for all bursts, but it lasts about as long as the hit flashes for other cannon shells upon striking an object.
If you open Burn.eff, you can increase LiveTime from the current 0.06 to, say, 0.12, which would make it last 2X longer. Write it as follows so that the original value is always retained in case you should ever want to go back to it:
LiveTime 0.12 //0.06
If you want it brighter, make this change:
Color0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 //0.7
This will give the texture the highest opacity, increasing from the 0.7 I had set to the max of 1.0, when it first appears, making it as bright as it can be made.
If you want it even brighter still, you can do this:
nParticles 2 //1
This will draw 2 superimposed particles, thus doubling brightness at a stroke.
If you want it bigger, you could try something like this:
Size 4 2 //3 1.5
This would make the texture (the full square perimeter) 4m wide instead of 3m upon first appearance, shrinking to 2m instead of 1.5m by the time it winks out.
Or you could reverse the size change, putting the smaller value first. This would cause the texture to grow as it fades.
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As to the smoke cloud that lingers for a little while, you could make it lighter in tone as follows:
// Color0 0.35 0.35 0.35 0.55 //0.7
// Color1 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.0
Color0 0.65 0.65 0.65 0.55
Color1 0.85 0.85 0.85 0.0
This increases R, G and B intensity at the start of the effect from 0.35 (all equal means grey) to 0.65, a lighter grey. Making these 3 values equal to 1.0 would be white, or at least as light in tone that the texture can be made. The second line (Color1) sets the values at the moment of the effect ending, which here is a lighter tone (although it would be fading to invisibility). The 4th value is the opacity, which at the start of the effect is 0.55. I had it a more opaque 0.7 at some point in the past. The max is 1.0, which would be maximum opacity obtainable for the texture.
If you want it to linger longer, do something like this:
LiveTime 6 //4 //3
I had the effect last 3 seconds in the past, then lengthened to 4 seconds in this pack. As here, it would now last for 6 seconds.
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My modding adventures got going by playing around with effects modded by others and which I has installed. The rest evolved from there. It's so easy to do when you have all the necessary files at hand in an existing mod. And you can find threads which explain the various effect file parameters.