Install Furcadia to a Flash Drive

Why localdir.ini?

Many players have asked about how to change the places where Furcadia saves settings, logs, and other files. The file "localdir.ini" is the key to this!

Localdir.ini allows for creating a portable installation of Furcadia on an USB drive (and having it save everything to that drive) as well as installing Furcadia onto a CD and writing the settings to a temporary folder on the hard drive, and it enables Linux users to run Furcadia under WINE, saving everything to somewhere in their home directories.

Making localdir.ini

There are two different ways to create this magic file, depending on what you want to do. If you aim to have everything saved into the same place (such as a USB drive), or if you just want to go back to the "old" way of saving everything to your Furcadia folder, then all you need to do is create an empty file.

1. Browse to the folder you installed Furcadia to (usually somewhere like C:\Program Files\Furcadia).
2. Right click in the folder area, and click "create new text file".
3. This will create a file called something like "new text file.txt", or "text file - new.txt". Rename the file to "localdir.ini".
4. You may get a warning that you are changing the extension of the file. Click to confirm that you want to do this.
5. You have now created the file! Any time you open Furcadia, it will now look within the Furcadia folder for the settings files, and this is where it will save them. Logs will be saved to the "logs" subfolder. DreamEd and the DS Editor will save their settings to the "settings" subfolder.

Advanced localdir.ini

Another option is to save your settings and logs to somewhere other than the Furcadia folder. For instance, you have installed Furcadia onto a CD, or perhaps you are using WINE.

1. To do this, open Notepad, then drag and drop the localdir.ini file you have created into Notepad.
2. Type in the full path and folder you wish Furcadia to save within: for example, D:\data\furcadia\
3. Save the file.
4. You have now given Furcadia a new folder to look in to find and write its settings, and to save your logs!