User Manual

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User Manual

A complete walkthrough of using Player Club Private VPN, from first launch to a live connection. For installing/building from source, see Getting Started. For what each feature is meant to do at a glance, see Features.

Table of contents

1. First launch
2. The app shell
3. Basic vs. Expert mode
4. Enabling the real virtual adapter (Expert)
5. Connecting to a peer — manual pairing
6. Connecting to a peer — Virtual Network (hosted)
7. Minecraft quick-start
8. Connection settings
9. Diagnostics
10. Themes and language
11. Saving and loading connection profiles
12. Disconnecting and cleanup
13. Troubleshooting

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1. First launch

On first run, the app generates a local identity key pair automatically — no account, no sign-up. This key is what peers use to authenticate you; see Legal & Privacy for where it's stored and what's shared.

The app opens in Basic mode by default, on the Network page.

2. The app shell

• Sidebar (left, 60px) — icon-only navigation between pages: Network, Diagnostics, Minecraft, and Settings (opened as an overlay).
• Breadcrumb (top) — shows where you are; useful once you're several levels into a page.
• Settings overlay — a frosted-glass panel opened from the sidebar, covering theme, language, and (in Expert mode) Connection settings.

3. Basic vs. Expert mode

Expert mode is a display filter, not a safety switch — a setting already in effect stays in effect whether its section is shown or not. Toggle it from Settings to reveal the Connection section (split-tunnel forwarding, FEC redundancy, extra routes) and the real-adapter option. Turn it on when you want to see or change advanced networking behaviour; leave it off for a simpler view day to day.

4. Enabling the real virtual adapter (Expert)

Creating the actual virtual network adapter (Wintun, Windows) requires Administrator privileges:

1. Switch to Expert mode in Settings.
2. Enable the real adapter toggle on the Network page.
3. If the app isn't already running elevated, it reports Needs Admin and offers a one-click relaunch — accept it, approve the UAC prompt, and the app restarts elevated with your prior state intact.
4. Once elevated, the adapter is created and appears in Windows' network list — the app automatically classifies its network as Private and scopes a firewall allow-rule to it.

Without the real adapter enabled, the app still runs the rest of the pipeline (handshake, telemetry) but does not create an OS-level network interface.

5. Connecting to a peer — manual pairing

The original, no-infrastructure pairing flow: you and one other person exchange a short text blob through any channel you already trust (voice chat, a messaging app, email) — the app never transmits it for you.

1. On the Network page, generate your Offer.
2. Send that blob to your peer through your own channel.
3. Your peer pastes it in and generates their Answer; they send that back to you.
4. Paste their Answer in. Both sides now attempt NAT hole-punching automatically; once a path is found, the handshake completes and the link shows Connected.
5. If it doesn't connect, see Troubleshooting — real-world NAT traversal between two physical machines is the project's biggest open verification gap right now (see Project Status).

6. Connecting to a peer — Virtual Network (hosted)

For a group, or for a more Hamachi/Radmin-like experience: one person hosts a small named, password-gated network, and everyone else just joins it by name — no blob-copying required.

To host:

1. On the Network page, open the Virtual Network panel and choose Create Network.
2. Set a network name and password, then create it. This starts a small WebSocket signaling server on your own machine — see Legal & Privacy for exactly what that server sees.
3. Share the network name, your host address, and the password with the people you want to invite, through your own channel.
4. If you're behind a NAT without port forwarding, others may not be able to reach your host address — see Troubleshooting.

To join:

1. Open the Virtual Network panel, choose Join Network, and enter the host address, network name, and password.
2. Once joined, you'll see a live member roster. Every member auto-connects to every other member automatically — no manual offer/answer pasting.

Both this and manual pairing produce the same kind of encrypted P2P link underneath; the Virtual Network flow just automates the signaling exchange between more than two people.

7. Minecraft quick-start

The dedicated Minecraft sidebar page shows your current effective connection settings and a one-click preset button that applies the game's recommended configuration: broadcast + multicast forwarding on, FEC redundancy r = 2. It's a manual convenience, not automatic game/process detection — nothing is scanned or launched on your behalf. Use it either with manual pairing or a Virtual Network; it only adjusts settings, not the connection method.

8. Connection settings

Found in Settings → Connection (Expert mode only to view; the settings apply regardless):

• Broadcast forwarding / Multicast forwarding — whether the tunnel carries broadcast/multicast traffic, in addition to in-subnet unicast. These apply live to an already-connected link — no reconnect needed.
• FEC redundancy (r) — how many lost packets Forward Error Correction can recover per group, without retransmission. Higher r costs more bandwidth for more loss resilience. Takes effect at the next Connect (it's a wire-format agreement with your peer, so it can't change mid-link).
• Extra routed networks (address/prefix, comma-separated) — additional networks steered into the tunnel via New-NetRoute. Requires elevation; takes effect at the next Connect. This is symmetric — each side must opt its own inbound traffic in, not just the sender's outbound.

9. Diagnostics

The Diagnostics page is your live instrumentation panel:

• Telemetry readout — RTT, jitter, loss, throughput, plus FEC-recovered and policy-blocked packet counters.
• Packet log — a terminal-style low-level log for troubleshooting.
• Topology view — a two-node diagram (you ↔ your peer), coloured by connection state, annotated with live RTT once connected.
• Spectrum chart — a live tx/rx throughput line chart with a hover crosshair and tooltip over recent samples.

Everything here runs locally, inside your own copy of the app — nothing shown in Diagnostics is sent anywhere; see Legal & Privacy.

10. Themes and language

Settings → Personalization lets you switch between 6 built-in themes (Midnight, Carbon, Nebula, Abyss, Aurora, Ember) and between English, Traditional Chinese (繁體中文), and Simplified Chinese (简体中文). Both apply live and persist across restarts. Some low-level engine notices and error text remain English regardless of the selected UI language.

11. Saving and loading connection profiles

From Settings → Connection, you can export your current connection settings (broadcast/multicast forwarding, FEC redundancy) to a versioned JSON file via a native save dialog, and import one the same way. A malformed or incompatible file is rejected with an inline error rather than silently applied — if in doubt, open the file in a text editor to check its contents before importing.

12. Disconnecting and cleanup

Disconnecting from the Network page tears down the encrypted session and, if you're using the real adapter, removes the virtual interface and its associated firewall rule / routes. If you hosted a Virtual Network, closing the app or leaving the network stops your signaling server — other members will see you leave the roster.

13. Troubleshooting

• Stuck on "connecting" / never reaches Connected — most commonly a NAT traversal failure. Confirm both sides generated a fresh Offer/Answer (they expire in usefulness once network conditions change), and that neither side is behind a particularly restrictive (symmetric) NAT. This is the project's most-open verification gap — see Project Status.
• "Needs Admin" won't go away — approve the UAC prompt when the app relaunches; if you dismiss it, the toggle reverts.
• Can't join a hosted Virtual Network — the host is likely behind a NAT without port forwarding for their signaling server's port; this is a known limitation of self-hosting (see Features).
• Settings didn't seem to apply — check the type: broadcast/multicast toggles apply live, but FEC redundancy and extra routes only take effect at the next Connect, not immediately (see Connection settings).
• Anything else — ask in Discussions or check existing issues. For a security concern, use Security Advisories instead of a public post.