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MC: MagicLauncher or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OptiFine


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MC: MagicLauncher or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OptiFine
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Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2012-04-09, 23:44

This is a very brief tutorial on how to use MagicLauncher to load mods like OptiFine into Minecraft so you don't have to manually edit the minecraft.jar file. This should give you one less excuse for resisting the performance-boosting magic of OptiFine.


STEP THE FIRST: Acquire MagicLauncher

http://magiclauncher.com will redirect you (click the title on the page) to the current thread on minecraftforum.net where you can download the MagicLauncher app for your system. You'll find there are Mac and Windows apps, and there is also a raw JAR for Linux users or people who can't get the GUI apps to work. Download the appropriate version and put it somewhere near where you normally keep your copy of Minecraft.


STEP THE SECOND: Acquire OptiFine (or other client-side mods)

http://optifine.net will redirect you (click the title on the page) to the current thread on minecraftforum.net where you can download the latest versions of the OptiFine client-side mod. When you see the first post, don't be paralyzed by the myriad options. If you don't want to read or don't understand the various options, just go with the first version. Do not expand the downloaded zip file. If you're using Safari, turn off that retarded "open files after downloading" option and try again. Put the downloaded zip file somewhere convenient; I created a "thirdpartymods" folder in my minecraft folder and put it there.

Protip: If you're going to put the downloaded mod in your ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft folder, don't put it in a folder called "mods". This name has a special meaning for some mod-loaders and will be treated differently by MagicLauncher.


STEP THE THIRD: Launch MagicLauncher

Upon first launch, you'll probably see something like this. MagicLauncher has a bunch of Minecraft news/reddit/twitter/etc junk that you can read at launch similar to the official Minecraft launcher. You could just continue to log in at this point, but that would just launch Minecraft without any modifications. So, first click that Setup button.




STEP THE FOURTH: Load OptiFine into MagicLauncher

Once you access the Setup screen, your primary objective is to add the OptiFine zip you downloaded earlier. Click the Add button, and load 'er up.



Verify that the mod's Active flag is set and the Status is OK. When new versions of Minecraft are released, mods have a tendency to break because the points at which the mods inject code get shuffled around (this is a simplification, but go with me here). MagicLauncher sanity checks the mods here and alerts you if it thinks the mod is broken. If that's the case, go see if a new version is available and start back at STEP THE SECOND.



STEP THE FIFTH: Play Minecraft!

When you're done adding OptiFine, hit the OK button to return to the main screen and login to start playing Minecraft.

To access the options added by OptiFine, go to the Video Settings screen. See all the new buttons? And whole new screens of options after you click some of them!



If you hover over an option, you'll also get a brief explanation of what it does and how it affects performance. Note that some options can improve the visuals of Minecraft without a negative impact (such as my setting of Fog Start: 0.8).

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Robo
Formerly Roboman, still
awesome
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
 
2012-04-09, 23:48

Wow. Thanks for the tutorial, Brad! I'll finally install OptiFine now
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Robo
Formerly Roboman, still
awesome
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
 
2012-04-10, 00:02

When I open up Minecraft in MagicLauncher, instead of the MagicLauncher icon hopping and getting a glowy mark, another icon appears with a picture of a cup of java and the label magic.launcher.Launcher. Is that normal? Did I put MagicLauncher in the wrong place?

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2012-04-10, 00:05

That's normal.

The icon you see is Mac OS X's default icon for a Java application. Since Minecraft isn't being run by its normal wrapper/launcher, it doesn't have an icon associated with it. As for the "magic.launcher.Launcher" label, that is also normal for Java apps that don't have a wrapper app (to display the classpath in the JAR as the title).

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RowdyScot
Ice Arrow Sniper
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Great Bay Temple
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2012-04-11, 16:44

Had MC crash 7 times since starting to use MagicLauncher.
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2012-04-11, 18:50

Thanks for sharing this with us Brad. I'm finally using OptiFine again.
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Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2012-04-11, 19:08

Quote:
Originally Posted by RowdyScot View Post
Had MC crash 7 times since starting to use MagicLauncher.
Bad mod perhaps? Are you using any mods other than OptiFine? Which version? Also, some of the OptiFine settings are a bit buggy. I can never use the Advanced OpenGL settings without it glitching all over, for instance, and in previous versions sometimes changing the texture pack in-game would trigger a crash.

FWIW, I've not seen MC crash any more with MagicLauncher than without. I've been using MagicLauncher on my main Hackintosh for the past few weeks, and not at all on my MacBook Pro. The only crashes I can remember seeing were last weekend when I was pasting/manipulating huge chunks of blocks, and that operation seemed to crash other players' clients too, presumably some not using MacicLauncher.

The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting.
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709
¡Damned!
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
 
2012-04-11, 19:16

I haven't seen any issues. The only thing that throws me is the "random tab" element. It's not weird enough to make me throw it away, but it's a pube's width short of being a group of annoying advertisements.
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Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2012-04-11, 19:28

Just poked around and found this MagicLauncher option for you, 709:

Options: [X] News

Uncheck that, and the next time you open MacigLauncher, all of those useless tabs will be gone.

The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting.
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709
¡Damned!
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
 
2012-04-11, 19:47

You're awesome Brad. Thanks.

(tbh though, I really should've found that on my own. :/. my bad)
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RowdyScot
Ice Arrow Sniper
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Great Bay Temple
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2012-04-11, 21:28

No, OptiFine is my only mod, and I've never used the Advanced OpenGL options...I'll mess around a bit and see if maybe some setting seems a bit off. I've never had MC crash like that, though.

Authentic Nova Scotia bagpipe innards
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RowdyScot
Ice Arrow Sniper
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
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2012-04-12, 14:45

Not sure what the issue was or what exactly I tweaked, but it's fine now. I toggled stuff back and forth a bit and put it back to where I'd had it previously.

Authentic Nova Scotia bagpipe innards
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drewprops
Space Pirate
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
 
2012-04-12, 23:57

Are there any other "must have" mods?


...
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