# 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 the file. 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!!

   Mac OS X users can simply double-click the file which unzips it. Then it is simply (we FAQ authors _love_ that word) a case of moving the new folder somewhere (preferably in the Applications folder).

   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?

   - In Windows, simply double-click PCGen.bat or PCGen.Jar.
   - In Mac OS 10.1, simply double-click PCGen.jar.
   - In Unix/Linux, you need to execute `java -jar pcgen.jar`.

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.

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
   Win Vista | 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\"`.

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

   - pcgen.filepaths - Specify the location of the filepaths file, which lists where the other settings files are expected.
   - pcgen.options - Specify the location of the options file, which lists what options have been selected, mainly in the preferences section.
   - pcgen.filter - Specify the location of the filter file, which lists what filters were last selected for each tab.
   - pcgen.templatefile - Specify the character sheet template file to be used for automatically generating a character sheet.
   - pcgen.inputfile - Specify the PCG file of the character to be used for automatically generating a character sheet.
   - pcgen.outputfile - Specify the name of the output file in which the automatically generated character sheet will be stored.

   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.