dred

Old Embers. It should be possible to reignite a fire using old embers from the previous day's fire. Old embers hide underneath the ashes, staying warm because of the ash blanketing them. Stir the ash around a bit to expose them and add some dry grass, some ripped bandages or torn up papers to get it going. Then add your choice of fuel and boom! Fire ready to go without an ignition source. Should be viable for up to a day or two since the previous fire, but no longer than that.
 
Chopping Firewood. After you get the log into your inventory, right click it and select "Split Wood". If you've got an axe on your character, it splits the wood into four smaller pieces of firewood that should burn for a fair length of time. I suggest this because putting a whole log onto a fire is a bit wasteful. It burns bright and hot but goes through the fuel faster as a result. By splitting the log into firewood, you can get smaller, more manageable fires that last for a longer time. Should also be easier to cook on them because the heat output is more manageable. Less likely to burn food.
 
Stacks of Firewood. After you split logs into firewood, you should be able to use them to build a "Stack of Firewood". It's pretty much a storage unit, but exclusively for firewood. Place it a space or two away from your source of fire (right now that's just a campfire, but may expand to include other things like brick ovens, fireplaces, and smokehouses). If you have a" Stack of Firewood" within a couple blocks of a source of fire, you can then right click an ongoing fire and select the option "Add Firewood from Stack". This makes your character pull a piece of firewood from the nearby stack and throw it on the fire without having to juggle it around your inventory. Make things easier and more streamlined.

I never said we don't have oil now...

What about this http://i.imgur.com/PW1Nb80.jpg - could be a compromise between realism and game. 

Personally, I don't understand why there at least isn't a release candidate in the iwillbackupmysave option on Steam. From what's been listed this seems like the perfect time to get this 'Beta' build available in that format and try to iron out a few more bugs before the actual Beta Release becomes the official current build (whenever that's supposed to be, but my money is on before the month is out) That sure is a big list of 'fixes' that need to be tested, sure would be a shame if they say 'It's in Beta, yay!' and then the game crashes on half the player-base's computers.
 
Then again, I understand how difficult it is to program pretty much anything and Indie Stone's problems are compounded by having an international team, three different distributors of their game that each need to be kept running, and being forced to rework just about everything pertaining to rendering the game in order to not have people's computers 'shit the bed.' That's not to mention how few people are actually working on the game when considering the scope of their ambition.
 
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't slightly annoyed, despite everything I just said in defence of their current 'release schedule.' Just releasing a hotfix on major bugs that are in the game now (namely crops turning invisible and every day being a thunderstorm) would be fantastic. I need mah sustenance, brah. Ya feel me?

This is my addition to the mods section of the site.  I created this mod for my son and I and we think it turned out pretty good.  All of the default firearms, ammunition and attachments have been removed from the loot spawns and the following items have been added:
 
Ruger Mark III - .22 LR
Beretta 92FS - 9x19mm Luger
Beretta Px4 Storm - .40 S&W
Colt 1911 - .45 ACP
S&W 686 - .357 Magnum
 
Ruger 10/22 - .22 LR
Winchester 94 - .30-30 Win
Colt AR15-A3 - .223 Rem
Remington 700 SPS - .308 Win
SKS-45 - 7.62x39mm M43
 
Mossberg 500AT - .12 ga
Sawed-off Mossberg 500AT - .12 ga
 
HK MP5A3 - 9x19mm Luger
 
All weapons/ammunition have custom sound effects.  All ammo boxing/unboxing recipes are implemented.  Certain weapons can only be found in police departments and/or gun stores.
 
Melee weapons, misc. items and containers added:
 
Metal Baseball Bat
Tactical Axe
Tactical Machete
Combat Knife
Entrenching Tool

Rain Poncho
Gunsmith Toolkit
Gun Cleaning Kit
Weapon Parts Kits
 
Large First Aid Kit
Medium Tool Bag
Large Ammo Can
 
Medium ALICE pack
Large ALICE pack

 
 
Changelog (current):
 
 vB30.009 - 02/18/2015
    --Removed custom profession spawn points
        --[Not working right]
    --Updated ALICE Attachment system
        --[Now uses context menus rather than recipes]
        --[Added ability to pack ETool and Combat Knife]
    --Added Rare, Normal and Plentiful loot spawn distributions
        --[Choose during install]
    --Changed ALICE component distributions
        --[Added to their own spawn table]
    --Fixed issue with E-Tool not equipping
        --[Now works exactly the same as a shovel]

* Full changelog contained in Readme.txt *
 
Download Link:
 
http://www.mediafire.com/download/292ek3wkrdxv50i/NCYawMod_vB30.009.exe
 
 
Feedback is encouraged and welcomed but I will not be adding any overpowered military weapons to the mod unless the map is updated to include portions of Fort Knox.  Enjoy...
 
TODO:
    --Add indicator for ALICE pack with attachments
    --Add Crossbow and Compound Bow + Ammunition to the mod
    --Add Tactical Hammer and write functions for it to be like normal sledge hammer
    --Add multi-tool
    --Coleman lanterns/portable stove with propane?
    --Whet Stone and Honing Oil to repair machete and tactical axe
 
Credits:
    RoboMat - for answering some questions and some good ideas from his mods.
    Pravus - for the Rain Parka Mod.
    Krogothar - for some excellent feedback and suggestions.

Hey peeps !
 
This is an awesome update by our lovely new teammate : Tim Baker ! (aka EasyPickins)
 
[bUG FIX]
Light switches and lamps should Just Work ™ now.  Whether a light switch is on or off is now saved (which required the world version to be bumped).  Plus, turning a lamp on or off in a room will no longer turn all the room's lights on/off.  Light switches have a higher priority than other objects so they're easier to click on (I figure that's ok since they're so tiny, they won't block you clicking on important stuff usually).  Also street lights don't mysteriously shut off after you leave an area or reload your game.  And Mash has been busy adding missing switches and lamps to the map. Fixed not being able to click the scrollbar in the options screen when scrolled down. Fixed the Reload difficulty combobox getting repositioned after clicking (it's position was getting restricted to the screen size even though it is in a scrolling parent widget). Made a few attempts to fix weapon-related bugs.  The timed action queue would sometimes get broken when firing/reloading while other actions were in progress. Fixed hovering the mouse over the moodles at non-100% zoom. Fixed multiple attacks per attack animation while holding down the left mouse button.  This doesn't fix the pistol shooting too quickly, it has a very short attack animation. Fixed the shotgun sprite not rendering while aiming it. Fixed the mousewheel not working in the character-creation screens.  The main options screen was getting the mousewheel events even though it was hidden. Fixed the traits list in character creation not scrolling properly after removing traits from it. Fixed dragging tabs out of the character info window.   Now when you drag a tab out to a separate window, that window will be toggled by the hotkey.  So if you drag the health tab out, 'h' will hide/show just that window.  Ditto for the skills and traits tabs. Squares along chunk boundaries were all marked as blocked in the NE or SW directions.  Tracked this down after I saw some weird lighting on the ground near a streetlight.  Probably affected pathfinding too. Light switches were using 30 days as the electricity cuttoff date when they should have been using the sandbox option (14 days in survival). Ambient light from outside buildings shines through windows and doors so rooms aren't quite as dark at night.  The code for this was already in there but got broken at some point. UIElement no longer creates a double-click if the mouse moved more than 5 pixels in any direction from the initial click. Fire fixes:MIssing sprites.  Still some missing smoke sprites due to a naming issue in the pack file. The same fire added twice to the global list of fires. Fire objects not getting removed from the square they were on after they burned out. NullPointerException due to fires getting added where they weren't allowed. Characters that were burning when saving the game weren't given fire sprites or light after loading. When a real zombie was turned into a virtual one the fire sprites and light were not removed from it, so when it got turned into a real zombie later it looked like it was burning. Got the molotov weapon working pretty well.  No idea if they can be crafted or not.  You can see the molotov flying through the air when thrown (It was using a sprite that didn't exist).  After throwing, another molotov will be chosen as the current weapon if the player has one rather than switching to some other weapon.  The throw physics needs work.  Currently, the closer the target, the lower the throw velocity. Crafting stairs bugs fixed.  There was a field not being saved that caused crafted stairs to become blocked when trying to use them.  There was also a bigger issue that put new grid squares into the wrong location, so when you went up the stairs there was no floor tile at the top and you ended up floating on z=1.  The fix for that might break other stuff though. [NEW STUFF]
Added mouse-over highlighting to combobox choices. Added 'walk to' timed actions before using a water source, using a stove, or grabbing items off the ground.  No more refilling your bottles from across the room. When clicking on a container in the world, that container will be highlighted in the loot window, but only if the container is in the loot window.  Previously, some other container (or none) would be highlighted even though the clicked container's contents were in the list. Added a 'layout manager' to remember the size/position/visibility/pinned state of the various game windows.  It remembers this at each different resolution.  All the info is saved to layout.ini in the user's Zomboid folder whenever the game is saved.  I'm a bit nervous about it causing exceptions right when the game is saving though.

Thanks
 
Been working on the nature objects under the new system, ill post some screens,
 
you will also see some cracks in the screenshots but they are just placeholders, im still working on their spawning rules.
 
Screenshots:

Thank you very much, Dred.

You did a good job taking all that stuff and putting it together. Now we have all good food in one place.
Fixes to do - there are items without icons assigned (BTW nice to see my icons in this mod - 'chip' me in the credits ). It's not enough to just to copy the icon into folder, you need to assign it to the item and load through the lua script. String 'Time:' in the recipes must/should look like that: 'Time:100.0,' - i'm not sure 100% but it seems that all original recipes are written in this way.
PM me if you need help with the icons and stuff

Reuploaded updated version of Craft Helper by Peanuts.
Changes:
-changed icon files names to Item_HBook.png and Item_HBookGrey.png - name Item_Book.png was causing issues. 
-modified recipesBook.lua file - now loads corectly those icons.
Working with version .19
 
http://www.mediafire.com/download/kd3410a4xn9c63p/CraftHelper.zip
 
All credit goes to Peanuts.

Reuploaded updated version of Craft Helper by Peanuts.
Changes:
-changed icon files names to Item_HBook.png and Item_HBookGrey.png - name Item_Book.png was causing issues. 
-modified recipesBook.lua file - now loads corectly those icons.
Working with version .19
 
http://www.mediafire.com/download/kd3410a4xn9c63p/CraftHelper.zip
 
All credit goes to Peanuts.

Reuploaded updated version of Craft Helper by Peanuts.
Changes:
-changed icon files names to Item_HBook.png and Item_HBookGrey.png - name Item_Book.png was causing issues. 
-modified recipesBook.lua file - now loads corectly those icons.
Working with version .19
 
http://www.mediafire.com/download/kd3410a4xn9c63p/CraftHelper.zip
 
All credit goes to Peanuts.