Is there something like CKAN, but for Minecraft?

[PTNLemay]

I tried Minecraft a few years ago, but I quickly gave up on it because the vanilla game is just begging to be modded.  And the more mods you add, the harder it gets to run the game.  I really wanted to try to become a wizard with a nuclear reactor in his basement and a laz-pistol on his belt.  But... it just gets too hard to keep everything updated and properly compatible.  In a lot of ways, KSP is like this.  Though I find myself going much longer periods of time before I start to think of KSP-vanilla as lacking (especially given how many mod-like features the devs have been adding to the vanilla game lately).  What helps KSP enormously is CKAN.  So it will clearly tell you (usually) when you are missing that special texture or that one dependency.  It's super freaking useful.

Like the title says, does anyone of something like that that exists for minecraft modding.  Something that can give you a broad enough list of all the mods out there, which texture packs are compatible with them, are the mods compatible with one another?  Etc.  The closest thing to this that I've found are launchers.  Things like Feed The Beast.  The problem is that there are so many different launchers, and they don't seem to check things all that well.  I remember the last time I tried FTB, it installed a bunch of mods I hadn't asked for, and it ran the game despite the fact that many of the mods it had installed weren't working properly (it started the game, game me a list of errors, and the next time I tried to load that game it said it was corrupted or something).

So yeah... if anyone knows something that would help, please share.

Edited October 2, 2016 by PTNLemay

[legoclone09]

I think Curse has a mod manager, but I don't know how good it is.

[lajoswinkler]

Maybe MultiMC? It's kind of close to it...

[Dres]

12 hours ago, legoclone09 said:

I think Curse has a mod manager, but I don't know how good it is.

The curse client is pretty good for Minecraft IMO, it lets you have a bunch of different profiles for different versions of the game or with different mods, and installing the mods is as painless as selecting from a list. My only issue is that it comes with a lot of extra baggage that I don't use related to curse, and unrelated, it doesn't support KSP .

[Pixel of Life]

14 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

Maybe MultiMC? It's kind of close to it...

MultiMC can't download and install mods, it can only manage MC instances. All mods will have to be installed and updated manually.

Now, MultiMC and Curse should work. Create an instance on Curse, use their app to install mods on it (or just install a premade modpack, doesn't matter), create an instance on MultiMC, then create symlinks for the Curse instance's "mods" and "config" folders in the MultiMC instance's folder.

Symlinks are... one could call them a "shortcut" of sorts, except that they can be used by applications as well. So if there are symlinks named "mods" and "configs" in the MultiMC instance's folder, and both point to their respective folders in the Curse instance's folder, when MultiMC tries to load the contents of those folders, the symlinks "forward" the request to whatever folders they point to. It basically causes MultiMC to think the files are there, in its own instance folder, when they aren't. It's brilliant.

Then start MultiMC and ta-dah - it loads the pack you had installed on Curse! And because it uses symlinks, you don't have to copy anything whenever you update the mods using the Curse launcher because MultiMC loads the mods and configs from the Curse folder. I did this with a MC 1.10 pack called "All The Mods" (check it out, it's pretty awesome) and it's working great. However, I had to copy the "resources" folder over manually because the pack has a custom main menu which looks stupid without a proper background image. I couldn't be bothered to create a symlink for a folder that contains a single file. But you could do that.

Edited October 3, 2016 by CaptainKorhonen

[legoclone09]

I forgot about something @PTNLemay.

Technic Launcher and the Feed the Beast launcher.