THE BASICS OF PATCHING
by Talzhemir
Saturday, October 5, 2002


 This
is mainly for BEGINNERS, who have never Patched, 
or are juuuuust learning.  But it's also for the self-taught, for those
who picked up their knowledge just in the course of play, to make sure
you know all there is to know.  This document establishes a solid
foundation for patching. :)  

 You can change everything about the way 
Furcadia looks.  If you modify it in the Default 
folder, only you see it.  If you modify it, 
save it in a Folder, and then tell the Dream 
Editor to access that Patch folder, then 
anybody entering your Dream will see things
"your" way.



1. HOOKING THE PATCH TO THE DREAM

 When you make a Dream, you use DreamEd.exe, the 
dream editor program.  









 In that program, there is a 
pulldown that says     PATCHES --> DREAM SETTINGS 











 If you choose that option, it lets you choose 
    ( ) I want to use files from this directory 
with my dream:"  
This is where you "hook up" a directory to your 
current Dream.  When you save the Dream, that info
will be saved too.

 Also on that pulldown is a setting for 
    [ ] Safety:  Don't let anyone else study my map, 
dragonspeak or patches.      If you want your map &
DragonSpeak kept private, be sure to click that 
checkbox.  (Although it's frowned on to do so
without the artist's permission, art can be screen-
captured.  Choosing this option will, however,
encrypt the whole patch, so if they wanted
to steal the whole thing, it could take them
a loooong time.)

Okay, now.... how to do Patches!!!


2. RUNNING THE FSH EDITOR 

 Patches are made or edited in the program 
FSHed.exe    You can open it using Tab C on the 
filefolder thingies, and clicking the Patch Editor 
button (you probably already knew that!).





 It's important that the files have specific 
names.  Furcadia's "main" server is "hardcoded" 
to accept only certain names for Patches.  
There's    item.fsh   portrait.fsh   wall.fsh   and 
a few others.



















 



 The art you see when you first log in is stored
in your Furcadia folder, under 
   Furcadia --->  PATCHES ---> DEFAULT   

 Changing these files will change the way Furcadia 
always looks to *you*.  This is most likely not what
you want.  (If you change these files, and you want 
them back they way they were, you will have to reinstall.)

 So, make a Folder in Patches for your *own* 
Dream's new Patch.  (Right-click an open area in the
Patches directory, and choose NEW ---> FOLDER )

 Open FSHeditor (you can do this safely right now).
OPEN the file "iteme.fsh".

 Click Tab C (left side of your Furcadia window, 
the file folder thingy).  Click Patch Editor.  It 
should "launch" FSHeditor.


3. THE "EXPECTED" NAMES THAT FSH'S MUST BE

 The Furcadia server "expects" certain names.  You 
can't name the .FSH file anything you want *if* you
want it to "work" in your Dream.

 Item.fsh and Item2.fsh are "full" and hold an EXACT
number of objects.  You cannot make these files longer.
You can draw over/replace items in them, however.


"ItemE.fsh" can hold up to 199 items.

 Unlike item.fsh and item2.fsh, iteme.fsh 
is empty.  So this is the most efficient place 
to add things to the Patch.

 You also can add floors with "floore.fsh".  
However, there is, at this time, no extended 
wall patch.  If you want different walls you need 
to modify the existing wall.fsh file.

Current list of .FSH files
( .PCX files are listed because 
 a previous version 
of Furcadia's shape editor, the Unicorn Patcher,  used them.
If you click this link,  you'll get both Unicorn Patcher and
the .PCX files.)


4. USING THE FSH EDITOR

 At the lower left of FSH Editor are small
arrows, like on a tape recorder.  These page 
through your "Shapes", the pieces of art.  You 
can also do this with the + and - key, just 
like you do in the Dream Editor.

 The tools, from left to right, are:  
pencil / eraser / moving hand / eyedropper / capture / fill tool 
 The
row below that is: buffer / paste 
Then there is magnifying glass + and -, 
which zoom in and zoom out.










 The "zoom" mode on Furcadia is limited:  that 
window can not be made larger.  So many Patchers 
prefer to work in other "bitmap" art programs such 
as Paint, Paint Shop Pro, and PhotoShop.

 Under the pulldown option "FILE" you'll find
Import and Export.  This program only 
handles    .BMP    files.

 When you save a file as a .BMP, it must 
have "full color mode", not 256 color mode.
There is usually a pulldown option under Colors;
make it "24 bit" or "16 million colors".
 
(PhotoShop refers to 256 color mode as 8-bit and 
"Indexed" color).  If you have the wrong mode, 
you'll get scrambled colors when you try to 
Import to FSHeditor.

 The biggest a single Shape can be is
150 X 150 pixels.



5. THE TRANSPARENT COLOR 




Whatever color pixel is in the lower right
hand corner of an Imported .BMP is turned into
background color.  If you don't want this 
transparent, add an extra bottom line of
pixels in a color not used in the art.



Suppose you made a spiderweb in PAINT.EXE 
and don't want to fill in all those holes, though.
Make sure that whatever color is in the lower right 
hand pixel is the same as those holes.

 Aero asks how you could make something
semi-clear.  "translucent" or "half-transparent".  
Furcadia is currently an "8-bit" "256 color mode" 
"Indexed Color" program.  We don't yet support
this function.

 We may, several updates down the line, but 
it requires major re-coding.  We *will* have it 
so that each *item* can have its own 256-color 
unique palette (although not *this* Update yet).

 So, right now, we do "shadows" as dithers 
(checkerboards of pixels) with background color 
in between.


6. THE SWITCHING COLORS 


Portraits and walkabouts have a special system
of "switching colors" that is documented here:

switching.colors.gif 

 If you open the file   portrait.fsh    
you'll see what I mean.


Please open the file:   player.fsh    
(using FSHeditor)

 You should see Shape 0.  There is no Shape 0. 
Click the < or > buttons near the bottom to 
scroll through to Shape 1.















 You should be seeing one of the rodent 
walkabouts.

 The head-fur (hair) is shades of pink.  On 
the right side is the palette.  The pink shades
(next to the bright greenish yellow) are 
"hardcoded" to turn into whatever hair color 
the player furre picked for their avatar.


//Anywhere you use those pink pixels, Furcadia 
will switch colors out.  This is true of both 
Walkabouts and Portraits.//

 Candy Dandy asked:  if u import, will the
pictures be correct?

Yes and no...


FSHeditor "guesses" what the nearest match is. 
But I designed the palette so that no two hues 
have the same brightness.  So, if you made a 
pink sphere in 3D and Imported it, FSHeditor 
might toss in shades of light brown that did 
not "color switch" like hair.

 Advanced artists can draw a figure in one
color range, and then switch color ranges in
Dpaint to achieve switching.
 colorswitch.how.gif 

 The surest way to make sure only color switching 
shades were used, is to draw the art in those shades.  
That's why walkabouts take such a long time-- they're 
drawn dot by dot in most cases.










7. DRAWING THE ART: CONTOUR, SHADING. PERSPECTIVE!

 The thing to remember when doing any Furc.
 art is that the diagonal lines go up-one/over-two.
If you're using a 3D program, that's a floor tilt 
of exactly 26.5 degrees.

 The Gryffes were not rendered in 3D, they 
were hand-drawn.  They started out as silhouettes 
drawn in 1 shade each of the clothing colors.  So, 
green bodies, gray heads, purple pants, orange 
leg-warmers.

 If you can get the silhouette right, chances are, 
the rest, like the shading, will follow.

   Elsae wants to know how to make it look 
   real with shadows on the patch you are 
   making like making it look like a light
   is on it.


Here's my Procedural on making items in a paint program.    

procedural.scratch.gif 

 NOTE: As you work on a piece of new art, I 
recommend saving the different versions with 
names  that have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. in them.  
If there is ever a question of whether or not 
you made something, you'll want to be able to 
prove that you did it, and intermediate 
versions are just about the only way to do 
that.  Furcadia has no record of who uploaded 
a certain pattern of bits first.

 Things that go flat on walls (paintings, 
brick patterns, etc.) can be made in a lot 
of ways.  My favorite method is to reduce 
the width by 10% and skewing it 27 degrees 
(my program doesn't allow 26.5 but this 
is close enough).  

 Things that go on the floor are reduced
in *height* by 50%.  Circles become a very
specific oval shape.






 You can't half the height or take 90% of 
the width in Paint.  That's why I usually use 
Paint Shop Pro.

 You can see an example of this oval in 
the Pudding Pit objects, in this Patch, the 
depicting the Further Confusion hotel.

 (When the REAL Further CONfusion furry 
convention goes on in California, we upload 
this so we can have a virtual convention on 
Furcadia!)


Further Confusion 2 zip 


 NOTE: You Don't Need Your Own Paint Program.
A small one called FSH Editor was included in the
download when you acquired Furcadia.  You can
also use art generated by Paint.exe (MS PAINT)
and import them into FSH Editor later.  FSH Editor
requires .BMP's.

 Here are two art programs Talzhemir recommends:
 
 Paint Shop Pro 7.0  $83.99 (Mail-in rebate will bring this to
$53.99!!!)
 This program is much easier to use than Photoshop.

 
 SALE: Paint Shop Pro Version 3.12, on 3.5" disk just $42.99
 This version is even easier to use than later versions.
 If you would like to try it for FREE (Free! Free!), just
 download it from:
JASC




8. ITEM PLACEMENT:  the .FBJ FILES 

 The placement of the items is stored in 
a second file, called the .FBJ. 
This data shares the same name as 
the .FSH you're working on.  

For instance, if you save castle8.FSH, you
will get castle8.FBJ, which must go into the
Patch directory to work.

 When you save the .FSH, if you've 
done any repositioning or properties, it
will create the .FBJ automatically.

 Items in iteme.fsh default to
unwalkable, ungettable, and unsittable.
Items in defaults such as item.fsh default
to whatever they are as a default.

 Properties for each item are set using
the pulldown option VIEW ---> SHAPE PROPERTIES
That would be sittable/walkable/gettable.

 Positioning of shapes is 
done with the pulldown option VIEW ---> SHAPE POSITION 
You can also enter offset numbers in the 
pulldown    VIEW --->  SHAPE PROPERTIES.










Two-part chairs arrange art
to be both in front and back of the furre 
walkabout (avatar).  The back part of the
seat is placed properly in the tile.  The
"foreground" part, however, is placed in
the tile south of the main object.

They're very effective but they prevent
dropping items on that one spot on the
floor.  Place a bright reference dot on both
parts, and line them up.  Then erase the
reference dots.


 The placement of furres is limited in 
FSHeditor.  The bottom of the diamond tile 
that you stand in, is the lowest that you
can place a furre.  (This will be corrected
in the next version of FSHeditor.)

 In a preliminary version, the Gryffe 
is sitting way too high to reach the cushion 
when facing NE or NW.  That's because their
wingtip couldn't be placed lower in the picture.
That will get fixed by Sanctimonious when he
creates the actual Update.)

9. THE "HARDCODED" ITEMS 
A few of the default items (notably, the
red ball, and the teleporters to main
maps) have code that cannot be changed in
the editor.  Nor can those properties be
assigned to items via the FSHeditor.


9. SONGS AND SOUND EFFECTS 

 Music is done by saving .MID files into 
that same folder, with a name that is M*.mid
such as m1.mid, m2.mid, m3.mid, etc.






 The number replacing * is the number you 
put in the Editor, if you mention it in the 
Dragonspeak.

 You can also change the sound effects. 
They have to be named s*.wav,  
as in   s1.wav, s2.wav, etc.



10. THE PALETTE


Furcadia is currently a single standard 
256 color palette.  FSHeditor will convert the 
.BMP to that palette for you.  (We almost
never change the palette.  When we do, the new
palette is named for the creature that appeared
in that release of Furcadia.  The current is
referred to as the "Bunny" palette.)

 The current Furcadia palette is stored
in the file Border1.pcx  For those advanced
Patchers who want a different palette, that can be
done by adding a Marbled.pcx file to a Patch.  (It must be
a 256 color .PCX with NO stencil saved.)
Marbled.pcx is the background behind the buttons.

Made for a World of Darkness setting 
(Wraith: the Oblivion), this file reduces
colors to twilight.  nightvision.zip


*NOTE: Title261.pcx has the WRONG palette.  It's
missing 2 shades of blue.

 I asked Sanctimonious to use the same 
convention that Paint Shop Pro uses, that 
you automatically "eyedropper" on the next 
click, if you hold down the CTRL button.

 You can Eyedropper the gray-blue background 
color that's Transparent color and you can 
draw or fill with it as if it were a regular color.


11. THE "ON SERVER" PATCHES 
 If your connection is too slow to upload,
take heart- you can use the "on server" Patches.

 Open "Dream Settings" (CTRL-L) in DreamEd,
and select option 3
"I want to use a patch from the server. Here's the name of the patch".
Write in any of the names below to the text blank: 
        
Name        Made by     Description
christmas1  Talzhemir   Winter patch for Christmas
halloween1  Talzhemir   The halloween patch for scary dreams
                                             =^.^= 
night1      Talzhemir   Night patch  (note: this Patch
                        may produce actual depression.)

12. FURCADIA ART USING 3D RENDERINGS 


Furcadia's original first walkabouts
were made in 3DStudio.  Bird and butterfly wings
were done much later using 3DS Max.  Flapping
wings are pretty hard to do in perspective.


















 Here
is information on the free 3D program

Introducing GMAX 


Official Patch Info is kept  here.


*Patches 
These Patches were donated by their artists for other
furres to use.  If you place a small text file called 
readme.txt in your Patch folder, that too will be
uploaded with your Dream, taking up almost no time
in the download.  Please credit all artists whose
works you either use or modify-and-use.


 From time to time, I'll create a sort of play-by-play
of how something was done.  They're not quite tutorials, 
but they're very similar; they're called "procedurals".
(If you do a Search in the Patches Forum for the keyword
Procedural you'll get a listing of them.)


--Talzhemir