NOTE: most of this is now obsolite. although i am leaving this here as there is still some information that can be of use (and it took a long time to write :P )
i provide for you here, what i hope to be a helpful step by step to setting up minecraft in order to play on our server.
i will attempt to give instructions for both windows / mac as best i can.
installing minecraft
the first thing you will want to do, after you create your minecraft account, is to download and install the ‘vanilla’ client from www.minecraft.net.
NOTE: as minecraft and the minecraft server have the ability of having modifications made to the original files provided by mojang, the plain files without any modifications are referred to as ‘vanilla’.
NOTE: the minecraft.exe file (windows) or the minecraft.zip file (mac) that you download is not the minecraft program itself but the launcher/updater/downloader/installer. the minecraft program and files will be downloaded and installed by this program. when there are updates to the main minecraft program, this file will also ask if you want to update minecraft with the new version.
1. WINDOWS: create a folder on your desktop called ‘minecraft’ and place the minecraft.exe within this folder.
MAC: extract the minecraft.zip file into your /Applications folder.
NOTE: before you run the launcher, minecraft requires java to run. if you do not have java installed on your system you’ll need to grab it from java.com.
2. run the launcher and log in. when you do this it should download the latest version of the minecraft.jar file which is the main modifiable portion of minecraft. it will then run this file which will install all the other parts of minecraft and will create your first world.
at this point, vanilla minecraft is now installed and you can play single player or connect to a multiplayer server. but for our purposes, we have a few other things to do.
installing the minecraft jar switcher
as our server uses many modifications/plugins we also need to give our players an updated version of the minecraft.jar file so that they can use some of the perks we have on the server. that being said, as you get more familiar with minecraft, you will understand the importance of keeping backups of multiple minecraft.jar files with different modifications. here is where we set that up.
3. download the minecraft jar switcher. in WINDOWS i would place this in the minecraft folder on your desktop. for MAC you can create a folder on your desktop called ‘minecraft’ and place this file in it.
NOTE: this file will, in essence, replace your launcher. or more correctly it will be a launcher launcher. this file will check the current minecraft.jar to see if there is a backup. if there is not, it will ask you if you want to add this jar to your jar list and will want a description. otherwise it will just go into the list of previous jars you have saved and you will be able to select which one you want to use. then it will launch minecraft using the jar file you have selected. think of jars as a real glass jar that you keep things in. each jar has different stuff in it.
NOTE 2: if you run minecraft with a jar file that you want and you log into the game and it wants to update, unless you REALLY want to update you should say no. if you say yes, it will download the new jar file from mojang and overwrite the jar file you selected from the switcher. the switcher will still have a backup of the jar file you selected and when you relaunch it it will tell you it found a new jar and if you want to add it to your list of jar files.
installing the custom jar file
from time to time i will update the server to utilize a newer version of minecraft as updates to the server and plugins become available. when the server is updated you will need to run the same version of minecraft.jar file that we do. not only that but in order to use the minimap you will need a custom client minecraft.jar with the added extras.
generally i use 2 modifications. one of which you could use in single player and it would increase your framerate and video options. that plugin is called optifine. the other modification is rei’s minimap, which communicates to the server and allows you to set waypoints and see where certain mobs are, along with other fine features.
to keep things simple i try to provide the current jar file with the addons preinstalled. the only thing you need to do is download it and MANUALLY replace your jar file. after which when you run the jar switcher it will add it to your list of available jars.
this actually is more simple than it sounds. and the folder you will need to go into is a folder you will become familiar with if you want to back up your personal worlds and change texture files. more on that later. but for now…..
4. click this link and download the jar file. this should always be current but if not there will also be a link in the download section.
next we need to replace the jar file in your minecraft application folder. this folder should be a .minecraft folder in your application data folder of your system. this isn’t as tricky as it sounds but if all else fails a bit of googling for the location of your systems minecraft application folder should help. this info should at least help you get in the right direction…
finding the minecraft application data folder
for WINDOWS go to your start button and in the run/search box type
cmd
running this command should bring up a terminal. in the terminal type
cd %appdata%/.minecraft
and hit the enter/return key. this should take you to a folder where the minecraft files are stored. your prompt should change to something like c:\users\\appdata\roaming\.minecraft for windows 7. write this location down.
for the MAC it should be in your Library > Applications Support > Minecraft. The complete path to the folder ‘minecraft’ is
[Startvolume]/Users/[You]/Library/Application Support/minecraft
this is often abbreviated as
~/Library/Application Support/minecraft
once you have located the application folder for your system and located the minecraft folder within that, the next step we need to do is simple…..
5. go into the ‘bin’ folder inside your %appdata%/minecraft folder and you should see a minecraft.jar file. overwrite that file with the minecraft.jar file you just downloaded. (%appdata%/minecraft/bin/minecraft.jar)
6. run the minecraft jar switcher and it should say that it found a new jar file. if so then you are golden…congrats :)
continue on and add the jar, give it a description and version number so you can tell it apart from your other jars.
getting on the server
armed with your shiny new install of minecraft with custom jar file and jar switcher, you are now ready to try to log into the server.
7. open up your jar switcher if it isn’t already open
8. select the jar file you just manually installed for play on the server and click the ‘set jar and open minecraft’
9. log into your minecraft account. IF YOU ARE ASKED TO UPDATE SAY NO!
10. click the ‘multiplayer’ button.
now on this screen you will want to add our server to the list (which should be blank right now) so you don’t have to enter it in each time.
NOTE: if you have not already done so, you will need to have given me your minecraft login name so i can add you to the whitelist on the server, otherwise you will not be able to connect. also you will need the current ip address and the port of the server which you can get by clicking on the menu item ‘minecraft’ above on this site and looking at the server status widget to the right.
11. click the ‘add server’ button.
12. enter a server name. this can be whatever you want so that you will be able to identify it in the previous multiplayer server list.
13. enter the server address and port and click ‘done’. in this case and currently it would be the ip address and port you got from the widget on this site. it should be entered in the following format: ip:port (ie 70.190.4.49:25566)
at this point you will be taken back to the multiplayer server list and should see the server listed that you just entered.
to the right of the description you should see a green triangle thing, which mean that it sees the server and everything is a.o.k.
underneath the green triangle you will see what looks like a fraction. it is a list of how many players are on the server right now and how many the server is set to handle. so if there was someone else logged into the server while you were looking at that it would say 1/20. you can also see this number on the widget on the website and will also see the names of the other players.
if i have upgraded the server to a different version, or you have the wrong jar file loaded the triangle will be red and there will be a number next to it that shows what version of the jar file the server is using. for instance if i load up jar version 1.4.5 and the server is running jar version 1.5, i will see a red 1.5 to the left of the triangle.
14. at this point you can either double click on the server in your list, or highlight it and click the ‘join server’ button.
after a bit of clicking and whirring you should end up on the server and see the world. *phew*
to get you started, depending on the level of access you have on the server, if you type /help you will get a list of commands that you can do such as /fly,/warp,/tp etc
if the ‘terminal’ fades off while you are reading you can just type the letter ‘t’ and it will come back up.
see you soon in world :)