What is a Minecraft mod really, and how can I sanely manage them?

I have found a few mods for minecraft I like a lot. I know you cant use them all at the same time. I know that some go together well, so how do I find out what goes with what?

Is there a way to load some for now, and unload them later so that I can change them out? I got a patch device but I don't think it works that well.

I tried to play with this stuff on my own but I got things so messed up that I had to delete everything and start over. So what am I doing wrong?

KH

Solution 1:

Mods will be compatible as long as they don't overwrite the same files in minecraft.jar. You can check this by looking at the class files in the mod (that have obfusticated names like a.class or bg.class, and you need to put into minecraft.jar) and checking that there's no overlap between the two lists of files.

Solution 2:

Using Forge is a good way to manage mods. also you can compile different minecraft.jars with each mod setup and store them in an archive somewhere with relevant names (i.e. mc-worldedit.jar, mc-adventurecraft.jar, mc-vanilla.jar, etc) then just rename them minecraft .jar and drop them in your bin folder when you want to use one of them. In general I try not to use mods that require modifying the jar file. Forge lets you create a mod folder and just paste the mods you want there (if they are forge compatible). That way you can just make a mod library folder and move the ones you need into the live mod folder as needed without having to mess with compiling the jar (you will still need to add modloader and forge into the jar, but the rest can just go in the mod folder).