Steam Punk Mod?

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

First of all, I should make one thing clear. I’m not a very experienced coder.

I’ve been having a lot of problems with the power upkeep of my mobile town (Yes, that big.). So, why not go steam-punk!

Mainly, what I want to add is a special wood-burning stove that can be welded into a car as a rig. You throw any burnable items, such as clothings, shoes, live zombies, logs, planks, etc into it to boil the water in it into steam, which turns fans inside the stove to generate power for the car. Recharge your car/truck batteries by burning a few trees.

Use lumps of steel to make the body and fans, take some electric motors out of cars to attach to the fans to generate power. Small version uses 3x motors, large versions uses 3x motors. Something like that.

For now, I just want to focus on logs, since I want a way to make it much more worth it to drive through forest. (Drive up to a forest, start chopping down all trees in sight, feed to your car then drive through the clearing you made until you reach other cities, etc.)

To keep the steam stove from being OP, I considered this.

See Gas’s energy density compared against wood.

44.4/16.2= 2.7

So, each kilograms of wood makes about a third of each kilograms of gas’s energy output. Good thing to note. How heavy is one unit of gas ingame? The power output of that?

There’s a CMB in the game that does what I want, called the Internal Furnace. I’m wondering if the easiest way to make this mod is to copy the coding out of that CMB, replace the codes under items such as a welding rig, RV kitchen set, etc and rename it as “Furnace Rig”, and get it to open the player’s inv when the player “e” it, “Burn what?”. And set it as a craftable item that unlocks at fabrication level 8-ish and mechanism level 5.

If we want to make this even more advanced, maybe use it as the water heater. Want a nice hot shower, big moral boost, lowers sick time? Reroute the steam away from the fans into the showering pipes.

Anyone want to help me to make this idea into a working mod?

2

Making many types of items into one type of fuel is very difficult.

3

Aye, is why I want to focus on logs for the moment. Maybe branch out. Maybe leave it at that.

4

That might be doable. I’ll take a look at the gas engines (to convert gas and electricity into wood and water) and minireactors (to see how to make an engine also a tank).

5

Uhh, for that first part, I think you’ve got that backward. Turn gas and electricity INTO wood and water? You mean the other way around?

And…

You’re a genius. Minireactors already have the codes we need! Make it to see logs as plutonium cells and adjust the energy output per unit of log, and perfection. However, one small detail would make it a bit OP, its ability to sense if your batteries’s full, which is the point where it stop burning fuel. Pop out that ability, apply some spit and polish…yess. Looking at the minireactor now.

6

Found it in the Vehicle_Parts.json.

“type” : “vehicle_part”,
“id” : “minireactor”,
“name” : “minireactor”,
“symbol” : “O”,
“color” : “light_green”,
“broken_symbol” : “#”,
“broken_color” : “red”,
“damage_modifier” : 80,
“durability” : 580,
“size” : 10000,
“epower” : 149200,
“fuel_type” : “plutonium”,
“item” : “minireactor”,
“difficulty” : 7,
“location” : “fuel_source”,
“flags” : [“FUEL_TANK”],
“breaks_into” : [
{“item”: “steel_lump”, “min”: 6, “max”: 11},
{“item”: “steel_chunk”, “min”: 6, “max”: 11},
{“item”: “scrap”, “min”: 6, “max”: 11}

Perfect. Edit into this…

“type” : “vehicle_part”,
“id” : “minireactor”,
“name” : “Furnace Rig”,
“symbol” : “F”,
“color” : “light_green”,
“broken_symbol” : “#”,
“broken_color” : “red”,
“damage_modifier” : 80,
“durability” : 580,
“size” : 10000,
“epower” : 149200,
“fuel_type” : “log”,
“item” : “minireactor”,
“difficulty” : 7,
“location” : “fuel_source”,
“flags” : [“FUEL_TANK”],
“breaks_into” : [
{“item”: “steel_lump”, “min”: 6, “max”: 11},
{“item”: “steel_chunk”, “min”: 6, “max”: 11},
{“item”: “scrap”, “min”: 6, “max”: 11}

I looked at the engines, seems that “epower” is the output per unit of fuel.

Now…The ID…Need to mess with that to pop out the function that makes it to stop when all batteries be full. Searching, searching.

7

Adjust power output of the Rig to maybe, 2/3 the power output of a truck althernator.

“type” : “vehicle_part”,
“id” : “alternator_truck”,
“name” : “truck alternator”,
“symbol” : “*”,
“color” : “yellow”,
“broken_symbol” : “#”,
“broken_color” : “red”,
“damage_modifier” : 80,
“durability” : 325,
“power” : -10,
“epower” : 2238,
“item” : “alternator_truck”,
“difficulty” : 3,
“flags” : [“ALTERNATOR”],
“breaks_into” : [
{“item”: “steel_lump”, “min”: 4, “max”: 7},
{“item”: “steel_chunk”, “min”: 4, “max”: 7},
{“item”: “scrap”, “min”: 4, “max”: 7}

I’m not sure, still, I’ve heard that using bigger engines means more power from the alternators. What say you?

8

Not true.

9

Not true.[/quote]

Ooh, swapping my oversized V8 engine out for a tiny chainsaw engine, then! Much better, lel.

Still searching for the ID list. Can’t find it.

10

Or just check the temperature in the steam generator tile and output power and corresponding rate?

oh wait moving fire…

11

By that I meant I would be changing the engine’s code for consuming those things. Also, it looks like you’ve got a good handle on things so I’m just gonna sit back and fix things you miss.

12

Steam boats! Steam weapons! Steam bombs! _

For bases that are close of water, maybe the jumper cables could be used as a base for a pipe system? You connect the equivalente of the jumper cable to water, and the water goes to the stove, mantaining a constant flux of steam. Of course, we also would have to transform the infinite(i think) sources of water known as pools in finite sources, to avoid “THE POOL NEVER ENDS! THE POOL NEVER ENDS!”

13

By that I meant I would be changing the engine’s code for consuming those things. Also, it looks like you’ve got a good handle on things so I’m just gonna sit back and fix things you miss.[/quote]

Ah, sure. Can you point me to the ID list? I’ve looked through tons of files and still can’t find that one thing. I think that, if it’s a snake, that it’ve bitten me a few thousand times.

14

Needs to have a water tank and consume water as well (not necessarily that fast, and not necessarily clean water).

I’m never sure what people mean when they say mod, if you build a working steam engine there’s no reason for it to not go into mainline.

15

Hmm… Look like I’ll cut stuff out of the engine ID if I can find it. Edit gas to water, and paste.

Where the heck is the ID list?

16

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:14, topic:8061”]Needs to have a water tank and consume water as well (not necessarily that fast, and not necessarily clean water).

I’m never sure what people mean when they say mod, if you build a working steam engine there’s no reason for it to not go into mainline.[/quote]

Talked to other people, turns out the item field was what I was needed to mess with.

Where is that list? Where is the .Json that governs engine fuel intake, etc? The Modding-how-to on the C:DDA website is down, only getting a 404 error. ( http://en.cataclysmdda.com/pages/16/display )

17

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:14, topic:8061”]Needs to have a water tank and consume water as well (not necessarily that fast, and not necessarily clean water).

I’m never sure what people mean when they say mod, if you build a working steam engine there’s no reason for it to not go into mainline.[/quote]

Talked to other people, turns out the item field was what I was needed to mess with.

Where is that list? Where is the .Json that governs engine fuel intake, etc? The Modding-how-to on the C:DDA website is down, only getting a 404 error. ( http://en.cataclysmdda.com/pages/16/display )

The topic moved to this, due to me seeking help on that ID list thingy.

http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=8636.msg197153#msg197153