Ok probably a silly question, and as a computer tech I should know this, but for some reason I can't wrap my head around it. Probably because vista's appdata folder always confused the hell outta me and inexperience with java.
Is it possible to have 2 copies of minecraft on your computer, and be able to run them without having to do any file system shenanigans when I choose to run one or the other? Say for example if I wanted a vanilla copy of minecraft, and a copy of Minecraft with mo creatures installed?
P.S. That's not just an example, it is exactly what I want to do. I figure I could eventually figure it out, but it sounds like a common thing, and asking could save me a whole lot of hassle of doing it wrong and having to redownload/unpack archives.
Run the normal client for one and
Minecraft Portable (which stores data in a /mcp_data subfolder where the EXE is) for the other.
WEEK-AFTER-EDIT: In case I didn't make it clear, MCP is completely self-contained. You can have multiple copies, if you want. There's no difference between it and the regular client, other than the storage location.
Alternatively, you can use batch files.
setlocal
set APPDATA = wherever/the/data/you/want/this/instance/to/use/is (don't include .minecraft)
path/to/Minecraft.exe
Because of the way batch works inside of the Windows environment, that doesn't do anything permanent to your APPDATA sysvar. In fact, I'm reasonably certain that MCP does just that.
EDIT: Even though I'm pretty sure it does this already, I added setlocal to the batch, so it definitely doesn't modify sysvars.