So I've been fiddling around a bit with Minecraft mod packs lately, and I've noticed two things. A. there seems to be no good mod pack launcher/manager and B. Curse Forge sucks and has no public API. Corporate bullshit with FTB and Overwolf... So I've been thinking about building a modding platform and making it open source and accessible for everyone. So a few questions for the ones of you who have done modding, or are just interested:

- Is there already a good platform?
- Would it be feasible with mod pack licences and what not
- Would the modding community welcome another platform?
- Is there a good launcher to integrate with?

To answer the last question myself; I love MultiMC, but until they add patch support to instances I don't think it's a viable alternative.

I've been using GDLauncher (https://gdevs.io). It has fairly good integration with Curseforge and it's cross-platform. Supports in-place updates which was enough to make me switch from MultiMC.

Developing an entirely new platform would be tough. Curseforge has so much momentum and the user base is so huge that convincing people to switch away will not be easy. Mod licenses are kind of a mess, although more and more mod devs recently have been open-sourcing their stuff so it probably won't be as bad as it was a few years ago.

Indexing the mods on your own platform but downloading the actual files from Curseforge would be a nice way to sidestep the whole license issue.

Although downloading directly from Curseforge has its own problems, since they're not obligated to tell you anything when they make a breaking change to their APIs.

@ScriptCoded Define "patch support" in MultiMC? I think they have what you want in the beta branch, but just to make sure...

Magic launcher. Best one.

@EmberQuill GDLauncher seems quite good. And if they have a "proper" Curse Forge integration, then that kind of defeats the purpose of what I'm trying to achieve. Even though a quick look though their sources leads me to believe they're just scraping. I'd imagine that not being allowed though?

@Parzi A while ago (when @rutee07 arranged that modded server) I raised an issue at their repo suggesting being able to have patches being applied to instances, like loading from a URL today, but instead updating an instance instead of having to replace it. I'll check the beta branch when I get the time :)

@ScriptCoded I wouldn't say it has "proper" Curseforge API integration. After all, Curseforge's API is not designed for public use and no modpack launcher other than Overworlf has permission to use it.

But it works well enough for me and supports patching/updating instances in-place, which you mentioned earlier.

I still also use MultiMC though, since GDLauncher only downloads packs from Curseforge. MultiMC lets me get modpacks from FTB and other sources too.

@EmberQuill It seems like FTB uses the Overwolf launcher though. And they don't have a documented API at least :'(

Edit: Do you have a way to download whole mod packs? Only found the server files, but that's an installer...

@EmberQuill Aaah MultiMC has it built in! Now I see :)