How Is There Still PCGen?

[Geoff Watson]

It's probably not worth the bad publicity (Big Bad Evil Corporation squashes small volunteer group), and effort (Hard to stomp out stuff on the internet as a new site will pop up quickly) so they won't bother. Yet.

Geoff.

 

[Gez]

How do they get away with that ? Simple.

Don't believe that the campaign files with PC-Gen allows you to "know" the non-open books for free. I mean, you can learn things like there's a feat called Treetopper in the FRCS. Great. That don't explain you what the treetopper feat does. You do know its prerequisites; but that's all you have in the way of the game mechanic. If you absolutely want to use the treetopper feat in game, you'll have to invent your own game effect or buy the FRCS.


I could say the same thing for a prestige class from Song & Silence (OK, so the Temple Raider of Olidammara must worship Olidammara...) or a class from Star Wars (so, there are three Force classes: Jedi Guardian, Jedi Consular, and Force Adept...).

You'll have the BAB and save progressions, the skill list, skill points, and bonus feat. You'll have the name of the special abilities, but you won't have any description for them. How much good is it to know you have Supreme Cleave if you don't know how Supreme Cleave works ?

You know, I've seen MORE closed rule materials on Wizards' very own message boards than on PC Gen.

They can't control all the stuff typed-in by contributors, so sometimes you can find a prestige class for which all class features are explained lenghtly in the strings normally dedicated for the name of the feature (that is, instead of writing "Big Hullahoop +3", you'll find "Big Hullahoop +3: gives you a +3 profane bonus on all rebuke undead check made while performing a hullahoop move-equivalent action"). Such things are rare and usually get fixed as soon as noticed.

 

[Duncan Haldane]

I wouldn't be surprised if Wizards' Legal Department is collecting evidence as we speak.
QUOTE]

I seem to recall that sometime last year the pcgen guys said they'd had email discussions with Ryan Dancey (while he was still at WotC), and had come to some decisions about whether it was competative to e-tools.

And as far as I am concerned, I have no interest in e-tools at the moment. e-tools won't support all of Wizard's books, let alone any other D20 product. There is no point using etools if I can't enter all the choices my players have made for their characters. Meanwhile PCGen does it all for me, and I can even edit the material to add my own changes if I need to.

I think the person who mentioned that PCGen doesn't list any descriptsion of effects has it right.

Duncan

 

[Duncan Haldane]

As for why its not going to compete with e-Tools, its written in Java, which makes it a hassle for many users (and slow for all users.) Its still pretty good at what it does though if you can put up with the performance issues and the arcane user-interface.

While java may be slower than native code in most cases, there are now some aspects of Java that claim to be faster than native code.

Also, e-tools is only available on one platform. Java, and therefore PCGen, is available on many, many more.

Anyone who uses Unix, Linux, or Mac can use PCGen much more easily than they can use e-tools (yes, I know there are simulators...)

Duncan (who is not a Java Junkie, but can see the benefits).

 

[RodneyThompson]

Well, since PCGen is a poorly programmed piece of crap that is full of memory leaks and contains massive overlap with no real thought put into the GUI, I'm not surprised WotC doesn't give a damn about them.

Look, I've used PCGen. Aside from that fact that it requires the SUN Java crap to work, is slow, and does bad things to my computer, nothing is more frustrating than to be making, say, a Star Wars character and coming across a "Priest Domains" tab.

I'm also still a little chapped that they had lots of stuff from my website in there that I didn't give them permission to use. But whatever. Use it if you like, but I'll take the Okina-rdae generators for Star Wars and do my D&D characters by hand.

 

[Psychotic Dreamer]

Moridin. How does it do bad stuff to your computer? I have been using it since it came out and has never caused any problems with my machine. Also I have never found it to be slow. I have used the Okina-rdae generators for Star Wars stuff and find them to be memory hogs and slow, but thats just my point of view. To each their own.

Also if you don't want them to have stuff from your website, contact them and let them know. 9 times out of 10 they will remove it if asked.

 

[Neowolf]

Well, since PCGen is a poorly programmed piece of crap that is full of memory leaks and contains massive overlap with no real thought put into the GUI, I'm not surprised WotC doesn't give a damn about them.

I take it you (and the others who have claimed PCGen is slow and has a bad interface) haven't bothered to actually try the new versions. Over the past few months, they've optimized memory/CPU usage, added tons of new functionality (like PDF export) and cleaned up the UI a LOT. Seriously, give it a try again before you talk about how bad it is. There's a reason software developers release new versions of their programs: development and perfection takes time.

 

[Gez]

Well, since PCGen is a poorly programmed piece of crap that is full of memory leaks

I'm going a bit off-topic, but as all memory management is out of the programmer's hand in Java, if you have memory leaks, that's because of the JVM you use, not because of PCGen itself.

You've got more memory leaks if you run Words or Excel than if you run a JVM, from my personal experience.

 

[EricNoah]

Robin .... to the Software Forum Cave!

*slides down pole behind bookshelf*

 

[Randolpho]

Gez is right.

I don't mind PCGen being written in Java; at least I can take it to any platform I want, when I want it!

If only they didn't use that $#&!#(*!#$ Swing GUI!!!!! I really hate that.