Battle of the Launchers

Anyone who plays Minecraft would be familiar with the launcher that appears before the game starts. It is the basic launcher that shows the newest Minecraft update and not much else. While this launcher is good, better ones can be found that do lots more things. 

The second picture, for example, is a cracked Minecraft launcher. Using one of these is not strictly-speaking legal as it means people who have not bought the game can play it. I'll admit that when I first saw Minecraft I used a cracked launcher to play it until I could afford to buy it. (don't tell anyone) Now I use the same one for playing on Minecraft servers at school as the basic launcher does not work properly at school. 

 

 The third launcher of six that I will be reviewing for you is SK's Launcher. (Right) This launcher gives you the same functionality that a HD Texture Pack Patcher has, just better integrated. It lets you put mods onto Minecraft much easier than modifying the Minecraft.jar. I used to use this launcher until Magic Launcher was released. (Next Launcher) It has multiple configurations so you can have modded versions of all of your Minecraft.jar files from different versions of Minecraft. It is good but if you are going to use it then look at Magic Launcher which builds on it and has a lot more features.

Magic Launcher is by far the best launcher I have seen. It looks
a lot like the regular Minecraft but there are a few differences. There are tabs up the top which contain links to Notch's, Jeb's and Dinnerbone's Twitter, Minecraft Wiki, Minecraft on Reddit and some others. This means you can have all your Minecraft related info right there on the launcher. It also features a modder and multiple configurations like SK's launcher. I won't explain everything here but I will post a link to Antvenom's video on it as he explains it perfectly. You can download mods, and organise them in the launcher without having to go into .minecraft and mess with the jar file. It is a very clean way of modding and very simple to use. I strongly recommend this to anyone who likes using mods with multiple versions of Minecraft.

The second last launcher I will show you is the Spoutcraft launcher.
It is designed for people that use servers with Spout plugins on them. They are certain plugins that only work with people using the Spoutcraft launcher but can be very powerful. Spoutcraft also features an Optifine like options menu. I highly recommend it but if you are not going to use Spout enabled servers I would stick with MagicLauncher. 

The last launcher I will talk about is the Curse launcher. I do not have a picture of it, nor do I have much experience with it as I saw it yesterday. It is a launcher that work with other games like Skyrim addons, not only Minecraft mods. I haven't tried it but if you are the person with lots of games and only want one launcher then this is the launcher for you.

There are some other launchers I have not talked about like the EvilMInecraft and TechnicLaunchers but these are specific to a certain mod pack for Minecraft. Even though I have not talked about them feel free to try them as they may be the Minecraft version for you.
If you have bothered to read all of this, well done. I hope you stick around on this site and on our channel, we will be uploading more things pretty soon.
Farewell,
              Fieryaleeco from OcelotsandWolves

Magic Launcher Download -- Antvenom's Video on MagicLauncher
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Regular Minecraft Launcher
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Spout Launcher
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I will not post a link to a Cracked Minecraft Launcher as it is illegal. If you want one you will have to find it yourself.
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SK's Launcher
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I can't find a link to the Curse Launcher but having a look around MinecraftForum might yield results.

Texture Pack Breakdown

 If you are still using the default Minecraft textures this is what you are missing out on. By default, Minecraft uses 16x16 pixel textures for each block, but HD texture packs can cram more pixels into each block, making each block look more realistic and beautiful. 
To put these textures on you need to use either the HD Texture Pack Patcher or a mod called Optifine. The links will be found at the bottom of this post. They basically modify the minecraft .jar to let it use larger images for blocks. Optifine is probably a better option as it adds lots of video options to Minecraft. You should check that out first as it is in most ways better.

The next thing to work out is what your computer can handle. There are many versions of texture packs with different pixel densities. The most common ones range from 16x (default), 32x, 64x, 128x, 256x and 512x. This means that each block is 32 by 32 and 64 by 64 pixels respectively. Start low and work up to work out which version you can run without lag on your computer. Have a look around on Minecraft Forum and Planet Minecraft to find some good texture packs that you like.

My favourites are Sphax PureBDCraft and R3D CRAFT.

Happy Hunting!

          From Fieryaleeco at OcelotsandWolves

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HD Texture Pack Patcher Link

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Optifine Link

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Another Dry Spell

Sorry again for abandoning you, all ten of you, I have just forgotten about this blog and about ocelotsandwolves. I now have two months of holidays and will be able to make more videos and posts. My friend Hrrold will soon have upgraded his computer as well, so we may be able to record things. I have also got lots of videos I made ages ago with the explosives+ mod. They are quite cool and I will slowly upload all of them.
I hope I can get this blog and channel back up and running.
I look forward to getting videos out as regularly as possible.
Farewell from,
Ocelotsandwolves