It’s come to that time again when a big version of minecraft is about to drop, next week minecraft 1.6 will be released to the public “Horse Update” adding horse’s, obviously along with Coal blocks, carpets, hay bales, leads, name tags, donkeys, mules, chest’s for donkey’s, horse armor and chests in nether.

This sounds all fun and dandy until you remember the server side software that needs to catch up, PirateCraft uses Bukkit as do most every other miencraft server in the wild.
With each big minecraft update there are always bugs and new micro updates will push out within the first week of release, as always we have to remember that bukkit takes roughly 2 months to actually update to the new minecraft, its absolutely ridiculous that it takes so long, then we have to wait for all the plugins to update with it!

So the server will be staying on 1.5.2 and waiting for bukkit & plugins to catch up, I know everybody will want to try out the new horses & features as soon as the update is available so I wrote up this quick tutorial on how to backup your minecraft.jar that’s on 1.5.2 so you can continue playing on PirateCraft and use the latest update!

Magic Launcher

Magic Launcher is a cross browser improved launcher for Minecraft that lets you easily add client side mods and use different versions of minecraft in separate configurations.

So what does that mean? It means we can have one configuration that uses 1.5.2 minecraft.jar & another config for the 1.6 minecraft.jar; switching is as easy as selecting the “configuration” dropdown above username and password login form, This launcher has been around since Jan 2012 and is widely used by the minecraft community as the best launcher around, so its safe, no worry’s!

Lets do this.

1. Download Magic Launcher and put it somewhere safe, you don’t need to install it, just run baby!
2. Copy your Minecraft 1.5.2 Jar file form the Minecraft directory into a safe location, you could keep Magic Launcher, mods & minecraft jar backups in one folder if you’re tidy.Windows Location: Start > Run (WinKey+R)  type in %appdata%/.minecraft/bin
   Copy minecraft.jar into a safe folder, or duplicate & rename it.
   Mac Location: Open Finder > Go > Go To Folder (shift+cmd+g) type in ~/Library/Application Support/Minecraft/bin
   Copy minecraft.jar into a safe folder, or duplicate & rename it.
3. Open Magic Launcher  > Setup > New name configuration MC 1.5.2, in the Minecraft.jar section press Select and navigate to the backed up 1.5.2 minecraft.jar file.
4. Optional, While you’re in the config screen if you want to add any client side mods like Optifine and Zans Minimap now is the time!
5. Press OK, You’re done, feel free to update minecraft via the default launcher which will update your default minecraft.jar file.

Screenshot above  is my configured Magic launcher, you do have other options with minecraft 1.6 update also comes a new default launcher that apparently lets you select versions of minecraft  but it’s not been fully tested & does not look anywhere near ready for the public, Magic Launcher works, and it works well.
This is a screenshot of the new default minecraft 1.6 launcher,