Linux Life Episode 66
Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to my ongoing quest regarding Linux. Well its definitely a strange time as I type this. The whole world is under strict quarantine and everything has gone a little bit crazy.
I know that using Manjaro on my i7 desktop is definitely driving me mental. Considering it’s Arch based everything seems to run quite slow. It’s not as if the i7-3770k is a slow processor, the machine has 32GB of DDR3 RAM and running from SSD the program still takes far too long to startup. Don’t get me wrong most things work under it but it is with no hurry.
Maybe by the next episode I might have changed what is on the i7 desktop, we will see.
I’m sure I have mentioned this before but I am mentioning it again. Occasionally I play the odd game of Minecraft, not very often but once in a blue moon I will find a modpack worth playing. Now if you want to play vanilla Minecraft then using the JAR file supplied by Mojang is more than adequate provided you have some form of Java installed.
However playing Modded Minecraft takes a bit more work. A lot of modpacks are available through the Twitch Minecraft extension. Which is as it say a plugin to run Minecraft games through the Twitch app. Now that’s fine if you are on Windows or MacOS as the Twitch app is available. However if you are on Linux its not available.
This is where MultiMC5 comes in... It allows you to download the modpacks from Curseforge and allows you to import as a zip into MultiMC5 and play them. Obviously like any Minecraft you do need a Mojang account to do so but if you see a modpack on Youtube and think that’s interesting if you can find the Curseforge zip download you can play it.
As it runs the modded Minecraft games there is nothing stopping you adding things like Optifine or shaders mods assuming your graphics card can handle them. Now some mod packs need a large amount of memory so be warned although modded minecraft can run on a something with 8GB or RAM you will probably want a small pack that doesn’t load several hundred mods (several modpacks do have Lite versions for this purpose) also as it’s minecraft you can run all of your texture packs too if you feel so inclined such as Sphax or the likes.
However take into account the larger the texture the more ram used by both the video card and ram requirement of the modpack when it comes to world generation.
So to take an example it seems the modpack of choice as I type this episode is MC Eternal been played by the likes of Direwolf20, The Yogcast and more. The pack itself is a kitchen sink modpack (but does have quests) using Minecraft version 1.12.2 and includes mods such as Vampires, Rats and many more. However the modpack does contains 315 mods so it requires quite a bit of memory to run.
MultiMC can also run the vanilla Minecraft and the Feed the Beast modpacks too. MultiMC will run the majority of modpacks that are available but like everything occasionally ones will throw it for example no matter what I tried I could not get the All the Mods 4 pack to work with it.
I’m sure someone will tell me what I’m doing wrong regards All the Mods 4 not that I am exceptionally bothered about that.
At the moment itch.io has several games listed for free due to the crazy staying at home we all have to do. One of them is Jam and the Mystery of the Mysterious Spooky Mansion.
It’s a point and click adventure game which claims to be a reserve whodunnit game. Basically you come in at the end of the (alleged) crime and have to then find evidence as to what the actual crime is. The game is pretty simple to operate and has 16 endings for you discover.
Check it out at https://ray-clark.itch.io/jam-and-the-mystery-of-the-mysteriously-spooky-mansion
However you need to be quick if you wish to play it for free as the offer runs out on Wednesday 8th April then the sale expires and it’s $2.00 to buy
I also played a fun short text adventure called Main Course which was part of the GDC relief bundle but you pay what you want and can even get it for free.
https://quantumsheep.itch.io/main-course
There are many other free games at the moment on itch.io but you can check them out yourself.
Well that’s enough to keep you amused for this episode, so until next time... take care