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Alrighty, this took about 6 hours to construct so you better understand what and where I'm going with this. (Dec. 19, 2004 - updated just a bit for Squirrel)

The whole idea of this page is to guide you into not only how to add a patch, but to set things up for more consistent management of your projects as you make more dreams. Even if you're currently a weaver, you may find these suggestions helpful in managing an unruly nightmare of patches and maps.

My usual habit of weaving, (yes, I do weave dreams), is to put each map into its own folder, with the patch in a folder in that folder. I am gradually getting around to the point where the images I use in each patch gets its own folder, and I'll usually have an archive folder in the dream folder as well. Though not always, sometimes I'll put the patch in the same folder as the dream for it makes zipping and sending the map and patch easier. But now you know how I set things up so as I describe this process to you, you can follow along with this "How To" better.

First you need a patch, , so once you find one you like, you then need to unzip it for the usual process for packaging patches is in zip files. Personally, I recommend QuickZip for this, not only is it free, but, well, it's free. And because of that, I will be referencing how it's done with quickzip, pretty sure you can do the same thing with other programs. Before we get to actually unzipping the patch, please note the following:

I set my folder options to show the full path in the address bar, this is very, very, handy as you will see below. You will also note that the extensions of the files are shown, this is because I dislike the hiding of known extensions. Usually these can be set in a menu item for your folders called "Folder options", the exact location varies between the versions of windows, on some, it's under the view menu, on others, it's under tools. There's a check box for enabling "Display the full path in the address bar" and if you so desire, one for "Hide file extensions for know file types". Check the first, and clear the second, again, as I said, if you so desire.

Now, open the zip file containing the patch, (click click) and unzipping program will start. The usual process is to select the "Extract" command, and depending on what you did just prior to selecting that command, you may find that you have to also click a check box to "All files" in the next dialog:

If you use Quickzip, you need to realize that you are using development software, while it's very good, (and did I mention free), it's got some quirks, like not remembering where it did it's last extraction to. Now what you want to do is go back to your dreams folder, (and open the patch's folder if you're setting up that way), and click in the address bar:

Usually, the path will "light up" when you click in there, but not always, so in that case you first need to right-click, and select the option "Select All". In either case, you then right-click and select the option to "Copy". You then go back to the file extraction dialog for the unzipping program and do the opposite there, again, usually, just clicking there will highlight the contents, and you right-click and select paste. Or simply use CTRL+V. (And of course you can CTRL+C instead of right-clicking.) Finally, you tell the unzipping program to "do it's thing".

Now before we get to telling the dream editor how to find the patch, it would be a good time to bring up the fact that not everyone does things consistantly in naming the files for patches. For the most part, they will be named correctly, but you should be prepared for the unexpected, like the Alpha Prime Eden Edge patch I have contains all the correctly named files, except someone slipped a micky in there and I got an ITEM.FS2 and an ITEM2.FS2, these will not work in dreamed as expected, so they need to be dealt with. More on that in a moment. Then there's patches in which the file is named for the patch. Like Honcho's two dice patch, and there's a feral wolf patch I found which the file is named FERAL.WOLF.FSH.

The legal names for patching can be found here: Default Fsh Counts and Misc Descriptions

The problem with the FS2 has it's own issues, you cannot simply change the extension and expect it to work, your dreams will either crash the editor, or furcadia. Nor can you take a short cut and save as a FSH file, (clicking NO on the dialog to because you don't want the FS2 info), but again, in the case certain standard files, you will cause crashing.

Now assuming you've gotten this far without losing any marbles, the final step is to tell dreamed where to find the patch. It would be lovely if dreamed could support just entering "patch" into the box, but alas. Oh mind you, actually it does, it's the furcadia upload which messes that wish up.

Strikethrough notation, Furcadia now supports what the geeks call relative pathing, that is, you can make a folder called Patch in your dream's folder, and just use that single word as the patch setting. You can also have the patch in the same folder as the dream, and just put a single period "." in the dream setting dialog. To fully understand what this means, you can, when compressing and sending the entire dream to someone else, they do not have to worry about where they uncompress the dream too, provided you compress the dream with what is called relative paths in your compression program, be it winzip or quickzip, for the "full path" is not stored in the archive, just the "relative" path. Or no path at all, in the case of "." path addressing.

Any way, you need to get to the Dream Settings under Patches now.

Psuedo Dialog, don't expect the buttons to actually "Do" anything.

You can use the browse button to also get the folder's name in there, and that method may be faster to use if you are more comfortable with it.

Special Note:
With the Squirrel update, the following is now legal patch path's you can use with your dream. If your patch is in the same folder as the dream, you can use just the period [.](see below for example) in the path textbox, (where it says F:\Furcadia\dreams\adm\admegypt\patch on mine), or just the subfolder where the patch lives, [patch], and even if the patch exists on some folder below the folder, you can specify what is called relative paths. Relative paths are ones which have ..\name formats. But, you know, if you're doing that, ...

Finally, once the patch is attached to the dream, you need to actually do a SAVE at this point, there is a problem with dreamed not remembering patch changes at this time, so if you were to simply exit the editor now, you lose the patch. This does not happen if you edit the dream after adding the patch for you've changed the map and dreamed notes that.

For a slightly different method of getting the folder name of the patch without adjusting your folder settings, you can also do the oppisite, you set the folder for the patch first in dreamed, then right-click[select.all] and right-click[copy] the path from the dialog above, and use that in the extraction dialog. Just so you know there's more than one way to skin this cat.