How to use Dream Ed

How to use the Dream Editor

Dream Ed Icon This tutorial will show you how use the Dream Editor so you can weave your very own Dream for Furcadia! A Dream is the name given to your personal maps, and dreamweaving is the term used to mean creating a Dream.

Start by going into your Furcadia folder, under Furcadia Tools, and clicking on the file named Dream Editor.

Dream Ed C Tab You can also open the Dream Editor inside of Furcadia if you click on the button for it via the C tab!

Now that you have your Dream Editor open, here is a diagram of the main features:

Dream Ed Diagram

The Current Object window shows you what object you currently have selected and it's where you click to choose other object art.
The Tools buttons let you pick between different types of objects, including walls, floors, items, effects, and regions. These buttons also provide different types of placement options, such as a flood fill of the selected object, or single placement.
The Shortcut Palette is a quick access area for the most used types of objects.
The Edit Window is where you can place your chosen objects and other types of object files into your Dream.
The Mini Map area helps you navigate through your Dream quickly.
Finally, the Info window gives you technical information including the size of your map and coordinates about where your mouse is in your Dream.

The following sections describe these aspects of the Dream Editor in more detail! Towards the end there is also a list of Keyboard Shortcuts and more information about the Menu Bar.

Edit Window:

The Edit window is what you will use the most! Here is where you can place floors, items, walls, effects, and regions (referred to in whole as objects). Your cursor in this window is designated by a transparent-white square. The currently selected object appears on this cursor, so that you can see how it will look before it's placed on the map. This square is surrounded by a large transparent rectangle which is the actual viewport that you will see in game, so it is a good visual reference for you as you weave. This transparent rectangle is very important, since it is a guide that tells you not only the field of view you and other players in Furcadia will see when your Dream is loaded, but also it is the hearing range of any one location.

Moving your cursor to the edge of this window will scroll you in that direction. To place an object, left-click on the position you wish to place it. If you prefer keyboard shortcuts, you can use your Spacebar. Additionally you can left-click and drag which allows you to place the object you have selected over a wider range of the Dream.

Another useful feature is grabbing an object that has already been placed in the Dream which your mouse is hovering over. You can right click, and the object you were hovering over will become your selected object.

Example: Say you're currently placing red pillows. If you were to move your cursor (which shows a red pillow on it) over a blue pillow and were to press either the Spacebar or left-click, you would place down a red pillow and remove the blue one. If you were to right-click over the blue pillow, your cursor would change from having a red pillow on it to having a blue pillow on it (meaning that you're now placing blue pillows when you left-click or press the Spacebar).

I hope I didn't make that sound too confusing, because right-clicking is a great way to save time when you want to place a certain object and you already have one of those objects placed on your map. Otherwise, you'd have to cycle through all of the different objects in order to find the particular one you want to place down on the map.

A useful trick in the Edit window is copying a coordinate, which is helpful for DragonSpeak (DragonSpeak is explained in another tutorial). Move your mouse over the coordinate you want to copy, press and hold the Ctrl key, then left click! When you paste (Ctrl+V or right click, paste) onto any text editor, including the DragonSpeak editor, you will get the (X,Y) coordinates in number format.

Mini Map:

Your Mini Map window shows a reduced picture of your map. The white box shows you what part of the map you're currently looking at in the Edit window. A fast way to move around your map and edit different areas is to left-click on the Mini Map and drag the white box over to the part of the map you wish to edit. Also, a normal left-click will move the white box over the spot you clicked.

Current Object window:

Your Current Object window shows you a picture of the object you currently are placing (holding in your cursor), and it gives you the number of that object as well. This is important for when you're writing DragonSpeak, which is explained in another tutorial.

You'll often see Sit:, Walk:, and Get: at the bottom of this window. These three things are followed by either an N or a Y. The N and Y stand for No and Yes respectively, which means you can use this information to know if your player automatically will sit on this object, if they can walk on this object, and if they can get (pick up) this object.

By left-clicking on this window, a larger window appears that shows you a small version of all the types of objects within that category of items, floors, walls, effects, or regions. Press the spacebar to see the next page of objects. These large windows with pictures allow you to choose objects quickly, without having to scroll through all of them one-by-one.

Shortcut Palette:

This is your Shortcut Palette window. It shows you a few pre-defined objects which are commonly used. You can left click on any of them and start placing them automatically. This gives you the option to avoid searching through the entire collection of objects when you're looking for something fast.

Tool Buttons:

These are your Tool buttons. The three left buttons which are stacked vertically deal with the three different ways you can place down objects, while the buttons stacked horizontally on the right deal with selecting a category of objects, including items, floors, walls, regions, and effects.

Dream Ed tools

Pencil Tool	The default tool selected. Used to place only one floor tile, object, wall, effect, or region at a time.
Area Selection	Left-click and drag the cursor to create a rectangle. Press Spacebar to fill that rectangle with the object that's in your Current Object window. You can also use this selection as a way to copy a section of your dream: once you have an area selected, press Ctrl-C. Deselect the area, left-click to choose the area you want to have the previous section copied, and then Ctrl-V to paste that section on your map.
Fill Bucket	Left-click the area that you want to fill and this tool will fill a large area with the same type of object that you have selected in your Current Object window.
Object selection	The default object category selected. Items are the category of objects that often have interaction, such as furniture, rocks, trees, etc. They have properties that include being (or not being) pickup-able, drop-able, sit-able, and walkable.
Floor selection	Floors are the category of objects which include tiles that players walk on top of. The properties of floors are being walkable/unwalkable, and sit-able/non sit-able.
Wall selection	Walls are a special type of object which go in between the objects and floors, essentially bordering a tile. Their properties include being walkable and unwalkable.
Region selection	Regions fulfill a function, rather than act as a type of object. They are used to organize, divide up, and control your map and dream layout, working closely with DragonSpeak.
Effect selection	Effects are an object category that include weather, magic, and other uses. They are the top most layer in the Dream and do not have properties other than positioning on a tile.

Info Window:

Your Information window contains stats about your Dream and what is underneath your cursor. Specifically, it tells you the total height and width of your map. It also tells you the coordinate of your cursor, which is very handy for when you want to use DragonSpeak. The last few lines of information tell you the number of the object, floor, region, and effect that are at the position. Just so you know, shape 0 is an actual object, it is just invisible, and floor tile 0 is the default grass tile. In this case where it says Shape no:, it actually means Item number.

Keyboard Shortcuts and Tricks

Those are all the windows that you'll be dealing with in the Furcadia Dream Editor. So far, things were explained only in terms of the mouse and clicking... but there are lots of keyboard shortcuts and tricks that can increase your productivity when Dreamweaving!

Number Pad	Move around in your Edit window in all eight directions.
Arrow Keys	Move around in your Edit window in the four main directions.
Home / End / PageUp / PageDown	Move around in your Edit window in the four diagonals.
1 2 3 4 5	Will change the category between objects, floors, walls, or regions, respectively.
+ and - / < and >	Will move you through the objects one-by-one and eight at a time, respectively.
Enter / Return	Changes the wall side when placing walls.
B	Shows the object selection screen.
C	Centers the cursor.
D	Opens the DragonSpeak editor.
G	Same as right-clicking, grab the object under the cursor.
J / K / M	Selects the Fill Bucket, Pencil, and Area Selection tool, respectively.
Backspace	Deletes the highlighted object.
Spacebar	Same as a left-click for the Pencil tool, as in it places the current object. If the Area selection tool is being used, it places the current object to the whole selected area.
Ctrl-D	Opens the DragonSpeak lines in Notepad.
Ctrl-T / Ctrl-Y	Makes the map shorter / taller.
Ctrl-F / Ctrl-G	Makes the map narrower / wider.
Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V	Copy / paste a group of area selected items.
Ctrl-H	Opens the Command Keys help window.
Ctrl-L	Opens the Dream's settings.
Ctrl-Q	Closes (quits) the Dream Editor.
Ctrl-M	Show / hide the Furcadia field of view (large transparent rectangle).
Ctrl-J	Show / hide the animation in the Dream.
Ctrl-K	Reset the animation in the Dream.
Ctrl-Shift-P	Opens the object folder.
Shift+leftclick	Deletes whatever you had on your cursor. For example, if you shift clicked a pillow while Objects was selected, you'll remove it.
Ctrl+leftclick	Copies the coordinates of the tile clicked to the clipboard.

Hopefully with these shortcuts handy, you'll ultimately be able to figure out your own style and workflow for dreamweaving!

Menu Bar

Finally, this is the Menu Bar. This is standard on most applications, so you're probably familiar with its appearance.

File Menu:

The File Menu gives you the standard options of New, Open, Save, Save As and Exit.
Save your map as a bitmap image. (.bmp) - you can use this option to make full maps of your dream.

Edit Menu:

The Edit Menu offers you the standard Copy, Paste, and Undo options.
You can also use this menu to change the size of your map.

Show Menu:

The Show Menu pretty much deals entirely with how the Furcadia Dream Editor makes your maps appear cosmetically.
The first 5 options start off checked and determine what shows up in your dream editor. Turning either the objects, floors, walls, regions, or effects off won't remove them from your dream, it just hides them from view in the Furcadia Dream Editor.
The Current Object At Map option determines if the current object you're placing shows up on your white "square" cursor.
The Show Walking Borders option determines if you see the red edges of the map where a player can't walk in the Furcadia Dream Editor (the red part won't show when you actually upload your dream to Furcadia).
The Highlight option gives you 3 choices on how your cursor shows up.
The Minimap option gives you 3 choices on how your Mini Map appears.
The Auto Scroll option determines if moving your cursor to the edge of the Edit window will scroll you in that direction.
The Show Command Keys option brings up a dialog box with all of the keyboard keys that were listed above.

Object Menu:

The Object Menu lets you look at a list of different categories of objects.
You choose one of these, and then that will be the object that you're now placing.

DragonSpeak Menu:

The DragonSpeak Menu gives you choices you have for adding DragonSpeak to your dream.
The Run Notepad option lets you edit your DragonSpeak using Notepad, but also brings up the DS template and Beekin's DS guide.
The Run DS editor option allows you to edit your DragonSpeak using either the DragonSpeak classic editor or the DS Constructor.
The Run Notepad without extras option lets you edit your DragonSpeak using Notepad without also bringing up the DS template and Beekin's DS guide.

Patches Menu:

The Patches Menu gives you options regarding custom patches.
If you want to add a custom patch to your dream, you click on the Dream Settings choice. There are other Dream settings in that option as well.
If you want to see a change that you just made to the patch that's already connected to your dream, you can choose the Reload Patch option. Custom patches, and how to attach them to your dream, are explained in a later section of this guide.
Open Patch Folder brings up the patch folder that is connected to your Dream.

Animation Menu:

The Animation Menu is similar to the Show menu in that is affects how your Dream Editor makes your map appear cosmetically in regard to animation.
Checking or unchecking the Play animation option will pause or continue the animation in the Dream.
Reset animation will start all the animations over in the Dream from the beginning of their Kitterspeak cycle.

Help Menu:

The Help Menu gives you all the standard help choices, including additional information about the DreamEd program and DragonSpeak.
It it well worth your time to read through both of those if you have a specific question about Dreamweaving and DragonSpeak.

Now that you know how the Dream Editor works, you'll be able to weave any Dream you'd like! It's a really fun thing to do. Many players in Furcadia have their own homes, castles, clubs, shops, and even cities, so with time you'll think of a good use for the dream editor, too! Once you start understanding DragonSpeak, you can even do quests, games, rides, or RPGs! If you have any further questions about the Furcadia Dream Editor, please make sure that the information isn't found anywhere else in these guides and then feel free to contact the Beekins in game, by saying help I need a Mason!.