Hi gang!

Editorial

It happened last week, at the time of writing. I was really looking forward to playing a session with my friend Aya, so I fire up Minecraft and...



... I got this instead: a loading screen which seemed to take longer and longer as the weeks go by. Seriously, when I first saw this I thought that Mojang had added some joke or something, that this wasn't anything serious but boy was I wrong!

You see, I also started looking deeper into what is happening here and guess what? Most of the delay here is caused by the launcher trying to download the latest news and ads from the Mojang website, as well as several others. We're basically waiting for our ads! But there's more... As you may know the launcher also supports other games besides Minecraft Java edition. Yeah, so about that: even if you don't have these games installed the launcher still checks your system for them each and every time you fire it up. This is also causing a part of the delay during the start.

All in all I got so sick and tired of this loading screen that I decided to look into another launcher. Which was something I was planning on for a while now, because ever since I started playing with Minecraft 1.20.1 I had to rely on 2 separate Minecraft folders, up until now I always only used one. Well, that became Prism, a launcher I am very pleased with.

So... I figured I'd raise the question about launchers on the forums, see this post of mine, and some people mentioned that they had tried other launchers but... it got tricky. And I can easily understand why. Fun fact: after I set up the launcher and moved all my Minecraft contents into it I also added it to my gf's laptop. While she's very happy with the launcher she's also happy that I'm the one who set it all up ;)

So let's dive into....

The Prism launcher

The Prism launcher, here is their official website, is a solid alternative for the vanilla Minecraft launcher. Seriously: you don't need anything else other than Prism to enjoy your game, you can even uninstall Minecraft after you got fully settled, it'll all keep on working. It is also an open source project which is hosted on GitHub, here is the link to their repository. And finally they also maintain an official subreddit, you can find that one right here.

But enough with the links... why would you even want to do this? Also: isn't this only useful for people who play with mods? And aren't mods extremely difficult?

So.. the way Prism works is that it gives every added Minecraft entry its own separate folder. All those entries you see above have their own dedicated folder:



See what I mean? By default this so called instances folder is part of the Prism installation, but because of my specific needs I separated it, so I more or less replaced .minecraft with the instances folder you see above. In case you're wondering why: I often dig around these folders to work on datapacks, study mod contents and so on. But enough about that: notice how some names match?

So every single folder you see here is basically its own .minecraft folder so to speak. It has its own settings, its own screenshots folder and if you want to also its own mods.

You may need to get used to this if you've only worked with a single instance folder so far, but trust me that it has plenty of advantages. Ever accidentally opened an old world on a newer version? Oopsie, better hope you still got some backups! Or forgot to move your mods for 1.18.2 out of the way while you were getting ready to enjoy 1.20.1?

Also friendly for alts!

So, I have several alt accounts. That's what happens if you really enjoy Minecraft I guess ;) Now, the vanilla launcher easily allows you to switch to another account and then start the same Minecraft game, though it does give you a warning about it. Prism on the other hand doesn't allow for this because of those potential problems. This could become annoying because... do you really need to keep multiple copies of the same folder around, just so you can use this with alts? The answer is yes, and no ;) The bad news is that yes: you will need a separate, dedicated, folder for the instance. But the good news is that the actual .minecraft folder can be "linked" to its original. So essentially you can share your Minecraft instance with your alts, no problem.

Setting up (modded) Minecraft was never this easy



If I want to add a new Minecraft version then I can grab whatever I want. Setting up Minecraft 1.20.5 with the Fabric modloader? I select the Minecraft version, I select the Fabric radiobutton and I'm done. Ever wanted to play with a modpack but didn't really know how? Also easy: select a website from the left column, then just pick whatever modpack you fancy. Prism will automatically set up the whole kaboodle, you don't even have to worry about the Minecraft version anymore.

And of course: adding such an instance won't affect your current games in the least. So no worries about accidentally opening the wrong save or anything.

Safely works besides your current launcher

Seriously, you don't even have to use their installer if you don't fully trust things. Just set up your Prism, add a Minecraft instance and then maybe copy some things over to see how it works out. If you don't like it then you can just remove the whole thing and you're done. You can always go back to your current launcher without any problems. See: Prism doesn't even try to automatically import your existing games or anything, instead it stays away from your current stuff. Safety first!

You can even use Prism safely besides an existing Prism installation. Feel free not to believe me; you'll see for yourself in a moment.

So how do we begin? Glad you asked! 😁

Setting up your own copy of Prism

First make sure you have Java installed. You can either just grab the installer from the Java website, but you can also grab the so called JDK: the Java Development Kit, check out the official Oracle download page for that.

Then hop on over to the Prism download page and grab the zip file. You heard that right: don't bother with their installer, we're going to set things up ourselves. And by doing so we'll make sure that nothing bad happens to our current game, which is important! Because I'm on Windows I'm obviously going to address this part, but you should be able to follow my lead for other operating systems as well.

Now, extract the zip file to a location where you'd like to keep your copy of Prism. But be careful: you can't use protected folders like "Program Files" and such because of this protection: it would disallow Prism to save its config and datafiles. If you want to use a global location I'd suggest something like C:\ProgramData. But the best location - in my opinion - is: "%localappdata%". Just pick a location, create a folder for Prism and extract the archive here. For example "%localappdata%\PrismLauncher".

For this tutorial I'll be using d:\temp\prism myself:



So, how do we start? Simple, really: just fire up "prismlauncher.exe". You'll be asked to select a language to use. When in doubt just check the "Use system locations" at the bottom. Next you'll need to pick a Java installation. If you installed Java then Prism should have detected them automatically, otherwise you'll need to point it to the right location.

Then it'll ask you to customize its looks. So basically if you want the theme to be bright or dark, how you want the system icons to look and most important: the background mascotte ;)

And finally, you'll have your own Prism. Remember how I mentioned that Prism can safely co-exist next to other launchers?



See what I mean? It didn't magically "grab" my existing accounts, it didn't try to copy my instances, nothing. It just exists as a new Prism copy next to the one I already have.

Important: different Java versions

Before we continue it's important to know that different Minecraft versions rely on different versions of Java. Generally speaking you'll need Java 8 for Minecraft 1.7 to 1.13, you'll need Java 17 for versions between 1.14 and 1.18 and finally the more modern versions require Java 21. See, the vanilla laucher ships with all these three Java runtimes onboard, so we'll need this as well. I manually added all three JDK versions myself and just pointed Prism to that location, but you can also use an installer of course.

Setting up our first instance

First you need to add your Microsoft account, otherwise you obviously can't play with Minecraft. Don't worry: you don't have to provide Prism with any passwords or what not, all you have to do is ask Microsoft to authorize Prism to check for your online status. It doesn't use your Microsoft credentials, instead it relies on a so called token provided by Microsoft. Keep in mind that this proces is time sensitive: if you take too long to authenticate then Prism will "time out" and refuse the token.

And trust me when I say that I'm confident that this is all fully safe. Why? First because I went through the sourcecode. Second, because of this:



Remember how I said that I have several alt accounts? Well, I don't use those all the time but obviously did add all of them to Prism when I installed it. Well, this is what happens when I try to use an alt which I haven't used for a while. See, this clearly shows us that Prism doesn't try to keep you logged in all the time, or somehow keeps your account credentials stored somewhere. All it does is ask Microsoft if you're still logged in, and if your session expired... you need to log in again. Safety first.

You can use the pull down menu at the top right corner of the screen to manage your account(s). Or you can go to the Prism settings and check the accounts tab from there.

Adding the instance

When you're fully set click "Add instance" in the upper left corner. For this tutorial I'm going to use Minecraft 1.20.5 and without any modding. Select the version you'd like, optionally you can use a specific group for the instance and then click "Ok" when you're all done.

You'll notice that the instance gets added almost instantly, but don't let this fool you! You see, Prism only checks for any libraries and such when you're starting an instance. So far we haven't downloaded anything, so this first run is going to take a little longer because everything still needs to be installed.

Well... double click on your new instance and let's go!



This will take a while, especially for your first instance. Like I said: Prism needs to download all required libraries at this point, not just those for the Minecraft version. But don't worry: if you install another instance then this will go much quicker because most libraries will already be in place by then.

tra, la, la, la la... still waiting.... why don't I show you guys something cool in the mean time?



Minecraft 1.20.6 (notice the armadillo?) with full shader support! Seriously, if you play vanilla or vanilla+ with OptiFine then I can highly recommend exchanging OptiFine for the Iris shaders in combination with Sodium optimization. Either hop over to the IrisShaders website to learn more about this and maybe check it out, or... why not use our new Prism launcher to set this up for us? I'll get back to this in a moment, don't worry!

For now I hope we're finally done installing all those libraries and if everything goes as planned you should now see something like this:


Notice how it didn't even try to copy anything from your existing game folder? This copy is running fully separately from your existing game(s), no need to worry about a thing. In fact.. why not fire up your current launcher? You'll notice that nothing happened.

But what about your existing settings you might ask... don't worry, we'll get to that! First allow me to play a quick survival game, ok? No? Something creative then? What do you mean I should finish this guide first... sjeesj, tough crowd! 😁

Meh, maybe it's for the better. Seems I spawned in a swamp biome, and I can already sense the witch out there waiting for night time to come over to torture and kill me ;)

Copying your current game(s) to Prism

So what if we want to add our current game(s) with all our custom settings to Prism? Well, then we need to copy some things over. But first: fire up the game you want to have in Prism, hop into one of your worlds and press F3 (the debug screen). Make sure you know exactly what Minecraft version you're playing. Then, go back to Prism and install a new instance using that exact same Minecraft version. Repeat said process for any other game versions you might have.

Next: open your file manager (like explorer.exe in Windows) and go to your current Minecraft folder. The default location is "%appdata%\.minecraft". Then go back to Prism, select your instance by clicking on it once and then use the "Folder" option on the right side of the screen. Or right click on the instance and select the option from there. This will open your file manager in your instance folder, you should see the .minecraft folder for the instance. So now it's easy: just copy whatever you need from your original game to your new Prism instance.

Warning: don't just copy everything, that can only cause problems. Instead, focus on these locations:

• Saves folder => This folder contains all your Minecraft worlds. But be careful if you're playing with multiple Minecraft versions, you may want to copy the worlds you need for a specific version only.
• Screenshots folder => Should speak for itself, no?
• Resourcepacks & Shaderpacks => I actually recommend not copying these over manually if you don't have to. Instead, use Prism to install these for you. The advantage of this is that it'll allow Prism to keep track of your packs so that it can update them if needed / wanted. I'll show you how to do this in a moment.
• options.txt => If you customized your keybindings, changed the volume of the audio or maybe used specific graphics settings then you'll definitely want to copy this file.
• servers.dat => Have you added any servers to play on? Then don't forget about this file: all those servers are saved here.
• hotbars.nbt => Are you a creative player by any chance? Then you may have set up some extra hotbars for yourself. If so: you need to copy this file also.

And of course the same applies when you're copying a modded game. In that case you may also want to keep an eye out for these locations as well:

• mods folder => Should speak for itself I think? Make sure that you keep your versions straight.
• config folder => Most mods allow you to customize their behavior, so if you did then you definitely want to copy this folder as well.
• Specific mod data => Some mods use specific folders for their data. For example Xaero's map mods use "XaeroWorldMap" as well as "XaeroWaypoints". The amazing MorePlayerModels (by Noppes) also uses its own data, conveniently called "moreplayermodels".

Customizing a Prism instance

Select one of your instances, then click the "Edit" button shown in the menu at the right side of the screen, this will open the window shown above. You can also right click on an instance and select the edit option from the pop-up menu. This gives you access to all settings related to the instance. Most important part here is the Settings tab: if you need to point your instance to another Java version, or if you want to change the default window size (or maybe play full screen) then you can set that up in here.

The resource and shader -pack tabs allow you to add (download), en/dis-able and also remove packs from your installation. Like I mentioned before I highly recommend to use this method to add any resource and/or shaderpacks you're currently playing with. Because this allows Prism to keep track of any new updates.

I think this should be self-explaining, right? If not just post your question(s) below ;)

Getting started with Iris and Sodium

If you ever used the IrisShader installer then it's easy to get fooled a bit. Because.. isn't it installing something kinda special?

Well, actually.. not really. See: both iris and sodium are essentially Fabric mods. And Fabric is simply another modloader, just like Forge, NeoForge and LiteLoader are.

Fun fact: Prism allows you to download and install mods straight from the launcher, and it supports both CurseForge and Modrinth (the latter website is an awesome place for Fabric mods!).

I hope you can see where this is going ;)

• Fire up your Prism launcher (if it isn't already running).
• Add a new instance, and select a Minecraft version. For this example I'll go with 1.20.5, again.
• Now select the modloader by clicking its radiobutton. We're going for Fabric.
• Prism will automatically select a version for you, but you can change this if you want. Star icons indicate the latest official release, which is usually safest to use. At the time of writing we're going to use Fabric 0.15.11.
• Click OK, the instance gets added.
• Now edit the instance, and select the "Mods" tab.
• Click on "Download mods" (at the top right side of the screen).
• Make sure Modrinth is selected, then check for "Iris Shaders" and "Sodium", chances are that these are shown by default.
• Click on an entry, then click "Select mod for download".
• When you're done both Iris & Sodium should be displayed in bold.
• Click review & confirm, and when satisfied hit that OK button.

Congratulations, you now have a graphics optimized and enhanced version of Minecraft. If you'd like to copy my example shown above then I can recommend TheCreatorPack texture pack in combination with the BSL shaders. And if your server allows for it I can also highly recommend that you consider using Xaero's map mods, it can make your life a lot easier.

And there you have it!

Getting yourself started with the amazing Prism launcher. Thanks for reading, I hope this was useful for some of you out there.