Startup and Installation Issues

  1. Where do I download PCGen from?

    You can download the latest version of PCGen from:
    http://pcgen.sourceforge.net, see the "Get PCGen" tab which will answer all of your questions on this!

  2. How do I unzip the zipped up files?

    Some of the install packages are zipped up. Those types of downloads must be unzipped to the same directory / folder. Unzipping is done differently on different platforms (don't ya hate that?).

    Windows users should download a zip utility such as WinZip. Here are some sample instructions for WinZip. After WinZip has been installed, double-click one of the files. This will open the file in WinZip. On the menu-bar, click the "Extract to..." button, and enter the location where you want to have PCGen (Example: c:\tools\pcgen). Make sure you have the "Include Subfolders" option checked!! Then you do the same thing for the other file. Make sure you extract to the same directory as last time. You might be asked if WinZip should overwrite the files already there. If so, you can safely choose yes, (no _really_, you can honestly, I wouldn't lie to you.).

    Mac OS X users can simply double-click the files, which will make two different folders. Then it is simply (we FAQ authors _love_ that word) a case of making a new folder somewhere (preferably in the Applications folder) and moving all the contents of the other two folders into that. Do not move the entire folders. Only the contents!

    Linux/Unix users should use Gzip. Unix/Linux users by there nature should know what they are doing by now ;-)

    Or, as an alternative to the 3 above, you can download one of the platform-specific installer-files. _Most_ of these will do all the work for you if you just download them, and then double-click on whatever came down.

  3. How do I start PCGen?

  4. What do I need besides the zip-files to get the program running?

    Glad you asked, because for many of you the instructions failed didn't they? Well here's why.

    Make sure that have the Java 2 v1.5.x or above (at time of writing we recommend 1.5.0_11 or 1.6.0_1). Runtime environment (or the SDK) installed on your machine. It's available from: http://java.sun.com/j2se/.

    Mac users should note that Apple does not, and will not, support Java 2 v1.3.1 or greater for anything less than Mac OS X, so there, ha-ha, go and spend more money!

  5. Will PCGen run on my machine?

    That depends. The one thing that decides if you can run PCGen or not, is whether you have at least JAVA 1.5.x installed. If you do, then it should run. If not, it won't. It really is that simple.

    However, some might want to check here, so here is a small list:

    OS Does it Work?
    Mac OS 7.x - 9.x No. (Actually, it might. As a work-around, you can install VirtualPC (or some such) and run PCGen in there.)
    Mac OS 10.x Yes
    Win 98 Yes
    Win 98 SE Yes
    Win 2000 Yes
    Win NT Yes
    Win XP Yes
    Unix Yes
    Linux Yes

    All the solutions above have been tested.

  6. Why is the Source "Load" tab all grey?

    This might be because your machine have a problem finding the files PCGen refers to. There is no easy way to fix this (there never is). There are machine-specific releases of PCGen available, but unless you choose to use one of these, you'll have to manually change the addressing in the files you're to access. Normally this is a case of changing a / to a \ or the other way round. Also make sure that you don't try to access something like c:/program files/pcgen/ when you should be accessing c:/program~1/pcgen/, or vice versa.

    Note that on Windows, enclosing the entire path in double quotation marks is an acceptable way to accessing the directory, i.e. "c:\program files\pcgen\".

    Another reason might be the _ever_ popular "unzipping error". You must keep the structure intact, when you unzip the downloaded files. In other words, be sure to unzip the files with the option enabled to create the appropriate directory structure within the install directory.

    In Windows this should be a breeze. But be aware of a small pitfall with Mac OS X here. I've discovered that Mac OS X doesn't simply overwrite the files within a specified directory, but in fact overwrites the entire directory. What this means is that if you do things in the "wrong" order some directories might be empty. There are three ways to make sure this doesn't happen.

  7. Why can't I make a new character? The "New" menu-item is grayed out.

    This is probably the most asked question so far. The answer is this: Before you can make a character, you must tell PCGen which rule books it should use. In other words, you must load one or more source books or modules listed under the "Source Material"-tab before you can make a new character. Make sure that at least one module is marked by a "Y" instead of a "N".

    You might wonder why PCGen doesn't do this automatically. This is because PCGen is made to be a RPG-generator. As it stands now, you may choose to load a Fantasy, Sci-Fi or Contempory module instead. Had PCGen automatically loaded a module, say the Fantasy module, it would have been the wrong one and you would then grumble about our stupid defaults while you unloaded that module so you could then load the module you wanted, the Sci-Fi RPG-character.

    There are options to load sources on start up or as you open a PC, take your pick, we don't mind ;-).

  8. What values can be passed in on the command line?

    When runing pcgen form the command line, the following options are recognised. Please note that the options are expected to formatted as -Doption=value

    When a value is specified for pcgen.inputfile, the program runs in command line only mode and does not display the gui, but instead generates a character sheet and exits.

    In addition you can provide any number of character or party files for PCGen to load on startup by just listing them on the command line.