Well I knew how to code back on muds. But it’s a different code. I’d be willing to learn if I had some peoples willing to mentor me but it’s up to them. 
Also, not sure a joint project like this is the place to learn. 
I’ve looked over and over into the whole self-sustaining rural outpost thingie. Wrote about it in the forums on this exact subject numerous times. My suggestion on the previous page is an approximation, but it’s very easy to implement.
Since I had been into the whole “explore the eco-friendly household” thingie, I’m versed enough to say that the full solution would request some 50+ material types with skill and crafting precision that’s simply out of average Joe’s comprehension. In today’s terms - it’s the top-of-the-notch energy invesment plan.
For the matter, simple “embue the walls with copper wiring” once you’re able to build some walls in sequence within the game, would suffice. We could put some internetz coin into it, couldn’t we?
[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:19, topic:3363”]I agree that existing building walls should just be assumed to have power plugs everywhere, also we’d differentiate a “shelter wall” that’s just a wall from a “house wall” or similar, that would include electrical hardware in the component cost, so you could build your own house out in the woods or something, and a recipe to retrofit cabling into an existing wall.
Appliances would check for an adjacent wall, then search around on the map for a connected generator or batteries, and pull power from that. I’m not too concerned about the precise mechanics, it’s not too hard.[/quote]
FYI, this sounds juuuuuust right to me. Sounds like you have it planned out well, without getting super complex0r with it.
Somewhat related, maybe wind and water mills can be built sometime down the line. Know you guys are discussing the “wind” / smoke dispersion system a bit. Anything similiar exist for rivers?
And speaking of rivers: have I just not explored enough, or are there no small streams / creeks / other sources of water besides giant rivers and toilets in this game? 
So someone mentioned power plants at the start of this thread…
High computers, fabrication, electronics, etc and fix one? …Hell just looting one could be fun (or !!FUN!!))
About the Mill. Down town Bradford, NH, which I grew up in, there is an old mill. The water wheel has been taken off, but the building is built out over a river and it used to be a mill. It’s right next to a damn, where the falling water would give the waterwheel quite a turn. This damn also backed up the water and created what is known as Lake Todd which is fished quite heavily. Just goes to show how much one lil damn can change things.
Maybe you could use copper wire to connect generators/solar panels to already existing appliances or appliances you made or something like that?
[quote author=dotASC link=topic=3576.msg54971#msg54971 date=1382243774]
I believe you can get water from swimming pools in mansions and hotels. IIRC
There are no streams, creeks, cricks, or springs. We don’t have anything against them, it’s just a matter of layering them into mapgen somehow. It’s a somewhat difficult issue since all of our terrain features that span multiple overmap tiles take up whole overmap tiles (the size of a building, or one section of road). We’d need a different system layered on top of that to build networks of streams, and the piece-wise way we do generation of the actual map tiles makes that difficult.
Difficult but not impossible, for example we could have maptiles generated such that all small streams cross at predefined points relative to each other (repeated tiling), so you can just lay down an arbitrary “plain with NW stream” tile that will connect properly to adjacent NW or NESW, etc tiles like roads do, but randomly meander within the tile.
I think that building power plants is out of the question, but building gasoline, wood-gas, solar, etc generators is viable.
The object on the right is “Bob’s Hot Brick”, a a radioisotope thermoelectric generator inside packed inside a soup can.
I think the best way for the player to generate electricity is using car engines of the many and varied varieties either to charge a battery bank and then run lights, appliances etc off of that.
What game is that from? Out of curiosity.
Building power-plants is a definite no, but what about restarting/repairing existing ones?
NeoScavenger. There’s a free demo, it scratches a different survival itch than Cataclysm or Project Zomboid.
What I thought. More stuff has been added, I guess. Must play it later…
Kevin, thanks for the reply re: small bodies of water. I’m sure it’ll work itself out, and it’s not really an issue at this point. Frankly, having significantly more available water would probably not benefit game play. It could end up diverting from the immersion in scaling already limited size “buildings” and other main areas. Additionally, I assume the streams would effect movement negatively, which would make herding zombies into giant lawnmower blade threshers even easier than it now.
It’s just a slight shame that replacing water once one is established with a relative “safe zone” is so bothersome to me
It’s kinda off topic but I’ll continue with what you were saying. Even adding a pond here or a small pool there would go far to giving more water sources.