Installing Minecraft Mods

Assuming you've already installed Minecraft, let's look at how to install mods.

But first, a word about safety

There are a lot of viruses out there, so be careful what you download.

Searching for Minecraft mods quickly leads you into a twilight of shady web pages. Be very careful to stick to well-known forums, and don't follow links to strange ones. (For instance, MinecraftForum.net seems good. But 9minecraft and minecraftdl are a bit scary, so I avoid those.) Many mods have download links via AdFly; that's fine, but beware! AdFly shows you nasty ads that attempt to trick you into clicking on them by looking like download buttons. ALWAYS wait a few seconds, then click on the great big yellow SKIP AD button. And even then, DO NOT CLICK on the obvious download buttons; you'll have to find the real one (it usually has a size like 39.65KB right after it). Eventually you'll get good at this.

And a word about autoupdating software

There are a lot of places in mod installation where you have to run something you just installed and then quit befor you can do the next step. Forge won't install unless you've run the matching version of Minecraft once; the mods folder doesn't appear until you've launched Minecraft after installing Forge; the latest version of Minecraft won't appear in the Forge profile editor until you've swung a chicken over your head for a while, etc. It's both a blessing (because things do fix themselves) and a curse (because doing a clean install involves many little half-steps just to get things to autoupdate).

Mods

Minecraft is relatively easy to hack on, so there are lots of fan-written code changes (called 'Mods').

Unfortunately, there is no authoritative source for mods, though there are a few lists, at e.g. minecraftforum.net, planetminecraft.com, and minecraftwiki.net. People seem to just find out about a mod and google it or search for it on youtube.

Installation methods used to vary wildly, and incompatibility was rife, but these days, most mods are compatible with MinecraftForge, a convenient mod loader.

These days, I refuse to install any mod that isn't compatible with Minecraft Forge, so the first step in using mods is to install Minecraft Forge.

Installing Minecraft Forge

To install Minecraft Forge, download the latest installer from http://files.minecraftforge.net (it uses an AdFly link, so see above for how to avoid getting fooled into downloading crapware or a virus), then run it, and let it install.

There are many tutorials on how to do this. Here are a few:

Once you have it installed, you have to run Minecraft once, select the Forge profile, and click Play once, to get it to create the mods folder.

Then, to install a mod, you download it to the Minecraft mods folder (see below), and then start Minecraft, choosing the Forge profile; installed mods are always active.

Finding the Minecraft mods folder

Before you can install a mod, you need to find your minecraft folder. Then inside that folder, you should see a folder named 'mods'. (If you don't see one, make sure you've installed Minecraft Forge already and started Minecraft again once.) That's where you'll put any mods you want to install.

Examples

Flans

The Flans mod adds realistic airplane-building options (not to mention Mechwarrior-like capabilities). To install it and create a World War II plane:
  1. Make sure you've followed the steps above and found the Minecraft mods folder.
  2. Download FlansMod-4.0.jar from the link on the forum page.
  3. Drag the downloaded FlansMod-4.0.jar file into the Minecraft mods folder
  4. Start Minecraft and make sure Flans shows up in the list of Mods, then quit
  5. Look in your Minecraft folder and make sure you see a Flan folder
  6. Download the Simple Parts Pack and WW2 Pack from the Flans forum page, and drag them into the Flan folder.
  7. To test out the mod, launch a game, open inventory, click to the Flans Vehicles tab, select an airplane, place it in the world, and use it. Look through the usual Minecraft controls settings menu to figure out what the controls are (e.g. what key Accelerate is).
  8. See Flan's World War Two Pack Recipes and Lex's Flans Mod Showcase video for how to actually craft a plane.

If you get a crash, you may have downloaded the wrong version of Flans mod or content packs for your version of Minecraft, or the wrong version of a content pack for your version of Flans. When I tested it, using the latest version of everything worked fine.

Haribote Aircraft

I was asked to find the Zeppelin mod, but that has not been updated for recent Minecraft, so I found another one that supposedly lets you build airships.

The Haribote Aircraft mod is available for Minecraft 1.6.2... but the latest Minecraft is 1.6.4, and the download site is in Japanese, so things are a bit challenging! Fortunately, somebody has made a nice tutorial video explaining how to install it. The key points are:

So, if you only have Minecraft 1.6.4 and its Forge installed, you now have to do the following dance:

  1. If you already have any mods, rename your mods folder to (e.g.) oldmods to avoid crashes from mixing old mods with new minecraft / minecraftforge, or vice versa
  2. go run Minecraft 1.6.2 once (by starting the Minecraft launcher, clicking on the Edit Profile button, picking 1.6.2, clicking Done, and then clicking Play)
  3. download and install Minecraft Forge 1.6.2
  4. run Minecraft again, edit profile, select Minecraft 1.6.2-Forge, and run; the first time you do this after installing Forge, it will create the minecraft mods folder.
And THEN you can move the two mods into the minecraft mods folder.

To verify it was installed, start the game, click the Mods button, and you should see the two mods in the list.

Then to verify that you can fly, start a creative game, press E to open your inventory, click on the Transportation tab, drag the Pyxis to one of your active slots, then place a Pyxis block and use it. You fly around by pressing keys on your numeric keypad (8/up = up, 2/down = down, 4/left key = forward, 6/right key = back, 5/center key = stop, and the corner keys are for yaw left and right. If your keyboard doesn't have a numerical keypad, tough... go get a usb keyboard that does and plug it in.