heres the thing. the glow point chunk stored in the model allows you to set the following:
displacement time (float)
on time (float)
off time (float)
parent subobject (int?)
lod (int?)
type (int)
properties (n-length string)
and an n-element array (for each point) of
position (vector)
normal (vector)
radius (float)
now the type field was originally used to define 0=points, 1=beams. this being an int value can have many other values. i was kind of disapointed that other glowpoint styles had not been defined. what you can do is maybe 2 = point light emission source, 3 = conic emission, or 4 = light shaft. im assuming this is an 8-bit int, but if its a 16 bit int you might allocate the msb to emission type, and use the lsb for glow-point type meaning any glowpoint could have any emission type. the structure would be essentially the same. if the value of 0 is no light emission, then it would be reverse compatible with older models. the only data the system really lacks is a place to put a color value. you can stick that in properties.
another (less hackish) idea is you set up a table for glowpoints, which defines bitmap used, how bitmaps are rendered, what kind of light emission is used, what color is the emission, other effects like flickering or color ramping effects, etc. everything but where it is, where it points, and how big it is (which is defined by the glow point chunk). you can then reference a glowpoint table entry with the type field (though it may be more intuitive to add a tag to the properties string to specify an entry by name instead). the default table would only specify the first to entries taken up by type 0 and 1. if you override these with a new table you could enable light emissions from existing glowpoint types without model tweaks! and if thats not enough you can always define new glowpoint types in the table.
actually now that i think of it the latter paragraph sounds like the better idea, its less hackish and lets us use the feature immediately with a small table and without major model surgery. i would also open this up to scripting so that script defined lighting effects could be done.