Getting Started

Getting Started

Building and running Player Club Private VPN from source. This mirrors the README's Quick Start — this page adds prerequisites, troubleshooting, and a first-run walkthrough. For how to actually use the app once it's running, see the User Manual.

Prerequisites

• Rust (stable, MSVC toolchain) — install via rustup
• Visual Studio C++ Build Tools 2022 — provides the MSVC linker Rust needs on Windows
• Node.js 20+ and pnpm 10+
• WebView2 Runtime — preinstalled on Windows 11

Player Club Private VPN currently only builds/runs a working virtual adapter on Windows. The frontend and most of the engine build cross-platform, but the real TUN/TAP adapter code is Windows-only for now.

Install and run

pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev

This starts the Vite dev server and launches the Tauri window with hot reload.

Building a release

pnpm tauri build

Produces installers (.msi, NSIS .exe) under src-tauri/target/release/. Official builds are also produced by CI on every v* tag push — see .github/workflows/release.yml — and published as a draft GitHub Release for review before publishing.

Using the app

1. Launch the app. It boots into Basic mode by default.
2. Open Settings to switch language/theme, or toggle Expert mode to reveal Connection settings (split-tunnel forwarding, FEC redundancy, extra routes).
3. To create a real virtual adapter (Expert mode), the app needs Administrator privileges — it will prompt with a one-click elevated relaunch if it isn't already elevated.
4. To connect to a peer:
   • Manual pairing — exchange an Offer/Answer blob (via voice chat, a messaging app, anywhere you already trust) with your peer, and paste each other's blob into the Network page.
   • Virtual Network (Hamachi/Radmin-style) — one person creates a named, password-gated network (this hosts a small signaling server on their machine — see Legal & Privacy); others join by network name + password, and every member auto-connects to every other member.
5. Once connected, the Diagnostics page shows live RTT, jitter, loss, throughput, and a two-node topology view.

Troubleshooting

• "Needs Admin" in Expert mode — click the relaunch prompt; adapter creation requires elevation on Windows.
• Build fails linking on Windows — confirm the MSVC Build Tools (not just MinGW) are installed; Rust on Windows needs the -msvc toolchain.
• cargo update broke the build — see the dependency pin note in the README's Getting Started section (alloc-stdlib / brotli-decompressor).

Still stuck? Ask in Discussions or check existing issues.