Current state of PCGen

[Graf]

So after a few months of haitus I've gotten curious about where PCGen is at.
There aren't any posts or info in the last couple of weeks on the sites they maintain (except that they're "near stable".

So:
Has anybody tried to use it recently? Is it improved much?
I assume they're still for profit and all the non-SRD data is for sale somewhere. Has anybody bought from them yet? (If so how is it working?)

 

[schporto]

Well I have the 5.8 rc6 running and it works well. Now, I also have a new PC so that alleviated a lot of the slow down problems. I think CMP hasn't released Complete ADventurer or Complete Arcane. Their full status is here http://www.codemonkeypublishing.com/index.php?module=htmlpages&func=display&pid=14
I do still have some problems from time to time with some oddities occuring, and I'm not sure how they occur, aren't reproducable, so don't report them. A budy made a 4th level elven rogue. He ended up with 7 feats. We couldn't figure that one out. Nor could we make it happen again.
But it does feel better then the older versions.
-cpd

 

[Psion]

I think CMP hasn't released Complete ADventurer or Complete Arcane.

Arcane is out, adventurer is not.

 

[kingpaul]

So after a few months of haitus I've gotten curious about where PCGen is at.
There aren't any posts or info in the last couple of weeks on the sites they maintain (except that they're "near stable".

I'm confused by this. Updates can be found here: http://pcgen.sourceforge.net/01_news.php

Has anybody tried to use it recently? Is it improved much?

Ther have been numerous speed improvements.

I assume they're still for profit and all the non-SRD data is for sale somewhere. Has anybody bought from them yet? (If so how is it working?)

Um, PCGen has *never* been for-profit. It comes bundled with the WotC Reference Documents and whatever OGC material publishers give us permission to use.

 

[trancejeremy]

Well, it's still unusuable on slower computers. I tried it on a P2 400 and it won't work. Have to move it to my main PC when I get a chance.

 

[kingpaul]

Well, it's still unusuable on slower computers. I tried it on a P2 400 and it won't work. Have to move it to my main PC when I get a chance.

What version of java and PCGen were you trying?

 

[Sieobahn]

I run it all the time, and have bought many of the data sets from CMP. I find it is the best tool out there for character creation and maintenance.
And as an added bonus, it works even better under linux!

The new 5.8 version should be out in the next few weeks. I have played with some of the release candidates and they all run better than the older versions.

 

[JimAde]

Performance has definitely improved, though I can't say how it will run on any given system.

I'm a big PCGen fan, but wish it was easier to create custom classes, etc. That's really my only beef with an excellent (and free!) piece of sotware.

 

[Graf]

Thanks for the comments, info and the link to the data sets!
I'm leaning toward sitting down with it in the near future for a couple of hours and seeing if it's gotten to a point where time spent dealing with PCGen is less than it would be do work things out by itself.

And it looks like they have Eberron inputed, which should be helpful.

 

[azhrei_fje]

I'm leaning toward sitting down with it in the near future for a couple of hours and seeing if it's gotten to a point where time spent dealing with PCGen is less than it would be do work things out by itself.

You should try DMGenie as well, if you haven't already. While I'm not a fan of using VisualBasic for application programming (too platform-specific, too slow), the author has done a great job. The user community is quite active on the forums and because they have implemented VBscript for much of the functionality, it is customizable much more than other systems.

The downside? Only WotC OGL data comes with it, although the user community is committed to entering non-WotC OGL products. It manages combat as well as PC/NPC characters, so the screen resolution requirements are pretty high (at least 1280x1024 to make it usable, but 1600x1200 would be much better; I use my new 1920x1200 laptop! ). And it's NOT open source which is a major annoyance for me. So much, in fact, that I've done some OOA complete with use-cases in order to design my own Java-based or C++-based implementation instead. But that's a separate story for a separate thread.