PCGen 2.4.0 Released

[okuth0r]

what do you mean calculate anything? what is it you want to see?
it does do many things, if your encumbered according to how much you carry, it penalizes the right skills, it auto calculates your bonuses, try two weapon fighting, including multiple attacks from high bonuses. It lists your skill totals with bonuses from anything (race, class, and stat), sets your armor class. what else are you looking for?

 

[Urklore]

Now that there is the basic foundation, I'd like to see more eye candy. This thing is horrible looking.

 

[Skullfyre]

new version of PC gen

But hey the program is not bad, besides they are and have been improving it with each version. Things can only get better.

 

[WizarDru]

Leopold, what's the status on the UI upgrade? Is it assigned to anyone, or has it been given any priority other than, 'we definitely want to do it'?

I think with a clean UI, PCgen could possibly become my character creator of choice. It's unquestionably powerful, but when it fails the litmus test of saving me time over pen-and-paper or Excel-and-book, I just can't justify throwing hours into trying to learn how to make it work. I simply don't have the spare hours needed to learn to do things the PCGen way. I'm not expecting the same level of prettiness as, say, the WOTC chargen demo, but I am hoping for a level of ease-of-use equal to say, LonePaladin's Excel character spreadsheet.

I don't mean to sound as if I'm beliittling the outstanding work the PCGen team is doing. I have great respect for the effort you guys are putting forward. No other product will be able to match the flexibility PCGen offers....but right now it's trapped in a place where I can't use it, unfortunately.

 

[Mynex]

Leopold, what's the status on the UI upgrade? Is it assigned to anyone, or has it been given any priority other than, 'we definitely want to do it'?

It's not assigned to any one coder in particular. All the coders are taking an active interest in imprvoving the UI. Already the Feat and Domains tab have been completed, and the Equipment tab should be done for this weeks release as well.

Yes, the original UI is clunky and hard to use, it was designed by one person for his personal usage (Merton Monk), and he put it up at Source Forge to see what would happen... well a bit over a year later, you can see what's happened! There isn't a character software generator out there that supports even 1/10 of what PCGen does (and if there is, I've not heard of it yet, and some of the ones I have seen charge!).

The documentation and website are getting a facelift as well, so soon, very soon, PCGen will have a much smoother, intuitive look to it. The GUI is the big drive right now, so it shouldn't be much longer before the 1st pass (making it look cleaner) is done. The 2nd pass is to ad more functionality (such as a pop up window for placing equipment on a character!).

The documentation will be in a 3 varieties, HTML format with a spiffy little navigation system, a plain text format for printing out, and a PDF format that will look all slick and professional!

The website as well should be done soon, PackAlpha is the guy that's heading that up and promises the site to be more user friendly and easy to get around in!

And there is starting to gain momentum to add more features for the DM's tab... so there's a lot going on with PCGen to make it an overall great, FREE product.

 

[Arabesu]

Bruce Cordell's revised prestige classes?

I was wondering if the newly revised prestige classes that Bruce Cordell has made available for psionic characters will be implemented anytime soon?

 

[Sammael99]

Yes, the original UI is clunky and hard to use, it was designed by one person for his personal usage (Merton Monk), and he put it up at Source Forge to see what would happen... well a bit over a year later, you can see what's happened! There isn't a character software generator out there that supports even 1/10 of what PCGen does (and if there is, I've not heard of it yet, and some of the ones I have seen charge!).

One UI improvement I'd love to see would be auto update. The updates to PCGEN are so frequent I can't keep up since it requires deleting the old version and reinstalling the new one so often. How about an online update a la anti-virus softwares ?

 

[jujutsunerd]

One UI improvement I'd love to see would be auto update.

This has been mentioned occasionally, and as it (Java Web Start/JNLP) is a technology I want to mess around with, I'll probably get around to it sometime. Unless someone beats me to the punch, that is.

/Jonas

 

[Mynex]

Re: Bruce Cordell's revised prestige classes?

I was wondering if the newly revised prestige classes that Bruce Cordell has made available for psionic characters will be implemented anytime soon?

Well, it hasn't been typed in yet, but I am sure it will be soon! One thing to remember about PCGen, it _is_ a volunteer basis only. No one gets paid to work on this, it's all a labor of love, so if something isn't implemented code wise or in the list files yet, you just have to be patient, we _will_ get everything i there.

 

[D'karr]

Keep up the good work!!!

Well, I've heard many people complain about the complicated user interface. I've also heard many people complain that it is too hard to use.

Yes, it might be all those things but it is also in development. In addition it is FREE!!!

I personally had some trouble when I first started using it. It was complicated and cumbersome and slow. Well, since then many things have changed.

You guys developing this ROCK!!! And I owe you a great debt of gratitude. Your program does have its problems but you guys sure do make an effort to take care of them. The software builds come in almost on a weekly basis and with so many sourcebooks out there I'm amazed at the amount of real progress you guys have packed into this tool.

I currently use ver 2.4.0 as a Character Manager for all the PCs in my campaign. To say the least I'm very happy.

Yes, the GUI can be improved. Yes, it needs to be simplified and it would be a godsend if it would load and run faster. However, it still does things that no other Character Generator does; it expands to fit your needs and it calculates things right.

You guys are doing a wonderful job and I just wanted to thank you. I get tired of hearing people complain about the program but not giving the software a chance.

I look forward to improvements in the GUI and in a module to handle campaign specific modifiers without having to manipulate the lst files directly.