It’s a rather simple mod, but I’ve created two simple vehicle parts that can be used to create kinetic energy out of… Nothing. It’s on the player to use these responsibly and place them in places that make sense.
Axle with paddles: 1000Watts of kinetic energy. Should be placed next to a river. Should. But it’s up to you, if you want to be a cheater cheater moose brain eater. Ideally its output would change according to season, but that’s beyond what it achievable by JSON, I believe.
Gravity powered engine: 100Watts of kinetic energy. Needs to be hooked up to an bicycle alternator and battery to work. Will power a dashboard light. Inspired by this: https://www.deciwatt.global/gravitylight/
Download link: https://github.com/cheesealmighty/CDDA-CheesyPowerGen/releases
BTW, the underlying gravity light thingy is totally suitable for the main game, just needs to be reigned in to require X min of cranking for X*Ymin of light.
Thanks! I would love to see mechanical contraptions get some love. Ropes and pulleys are basically preindustrial magick. 
And probably would be humanities fallback method of doing things for quite a while…
But I’m guessing this is not exactly possible using the JSON system? At least looking at the documentation.
My problem with the gravity light is that it produces 0.085W for 20 minutes, which is less than 0.1 battery charges in CDDA terms.
It shouldn’t be a vehicle part. It should be an item, like the powered light sheet, that you craft once to set up, and then repeatedly recraft to rewind.
Now that I think I have figured out https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/26948 and don’t feel like a complete idiot anymore, I am much more willing to think about how to set up proper paddle wheels. I’m thinking a perpetual fuel reactor part that has some new JSON bits to specify that it needs to be in shallow or deep water in a river overmap tile in order to work. It’d be pretty easy to work out.
I agree the gravity light shouldn’t be a generator, it should just be a standalone light that you interact with to “charge”.
A small hydrodynamo is certainly doable, the only tricky part is discriminating between still and moving water.
OTOH we can stick a windmill anywhere.
That would probably be the best. Mine was just a proof of concept with the given tools.
Are deployed items interactable in any meaningful fashion? Because the “charging time” of a gravity lamp, even if it was makeshift, doesn’t seem to be more than a minute or so. So could take just one turn to “charge” the device.
Alternatively, would it be worth it to implement some sort of “windup” category devices? Spring coil or rope-pulley based.
I think there’s definitely space for wind-up devices, and I think they can be done with the current JSON, because there’s no difference between a bomb counting down until it explodes or your clock counting down until it stops keeping time.
Aye. I could just use the lightstrip code, it seems. As such: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/y7gY45hWMZ/
Should be running for 30 minutes. But it doesn’t work unless I have it in my inventory, is this intended? So I can’t drop it on the ground and work on something.
I’m not really an inventory/items guy. I know some lights don’t work unless you’re holding them. You may want to look at flares and lanterns and see if there’s any difference.