Music: Ripple Field 2 From Kirby's Dream Land 3
LISTEN UP!
I've had a talk with a few friends about some minecraft stuff, since one of 'em recently got a new computer and whatnot, and the topic of Optifine came up. Now, I'm quite privileged to be able to speak with a minecraft mod developer, and general knower of deeper things about the game, so the neurons fired in my brain that Optifine, for current versions, doesn't exactly do much in the way of optimization. Really, you'd only want it for zoom, connected textures, and shaders (CODE WHICH WAS STOLEN FROM OTHER DEVELOPERS, BY THE WAY!!), which other mods can do a LOT better (tl;dr DON'T USE IT! IT'S CLOSED-SOURCE TOO, UNLIKE EVERY OTHER MOD I'M GONNA GO THROUGH!!!). I wanted to go ahead and give a crash course on the most essential mods to install to actually do the things that Optifine does, but objectively better.
A quick sidenote, by the way: all of these links will be to the Modrinth pages of these mods, instead of Curseforge, where applicable. Curseforge sucks for the developers, it sucks for you, and a bunch of these mods have moved to Modrinth entirely anyway. You can still download the individual versions for the mod off of the website, and put it in your mods folder for wherever you're keeping your mod instance. Nothing's stopping you if you still want to use the Curseforge app or something, though there are objectively better alternatives that don't have ads on a fucking desktop app.
Still though. Mods with no Modrinth equivalent will have (C) next to their name to let you know it's a link to a curseforge page instead. Nothing much I can do about it, curseforge has just been around for longer.
FABRIC-EXCLUSIVE
when talking about mods, there are two big modding platforms to consider: Fabric and Forge. Of course, both loaders have their forks (Quilt, Neoforge, etc.) but these are the main two you're going to be encountering. Fabric is more of a lightweight modloader, offering generally better performance with how it handles mods (at least, compared to Forge, which can really chug sometimes). Generally, the mod scene here is a bit more focused around Vanilla+ features (big mob-adding mods like Mowzie's Mobs or Alex's Mobs are only on Forge), but there's still a great deal of fun to be had on Fabric. here are the main optimization mods for Fabric ONLY:
SODIUM - holy shit I don't know what kind of funky magic Sodium does to make it work so well but it does. This is one HELL of an optimization mod, letting you double or even TRIPLE your framerate! Really a must-have when playing ANY version of minecraft (even vanilla! you can still use some optimization mods for playing vanilla, you know!), and you can REALLY feel its absence on forge.
SODIUM EXTRA - if you're aiming to make Optifine 2, you should consider adding Sodium Extra, as it adds most of the other Video Options from Opti to Sodium.
REESE'S SODIUM OPTIONS - the last of the Sodium Trinity (at least that's what it feels like to me LOL), Reese's Sodium Options doesn't offer any optimizations by itself, but DOES make Sodium's options nicer-lookin' and more convenient to click through.
LITHIUM - another optimization mod, aimed at optimizing the deeper systems of the game to improve frame rates and server performance!
CONCURRENT CHUNK MANAGMENT ENGINE AKA C2ME - optimization mod based around optimizing chunk generation. Vanilla minecraft is sometimes prone to stuttering when loading chunks, so this mod is a worthwhile download if that annoys you.
IRIS SHADERS - the big kahuna. Yep, it's shaders. Not really optimization, I know, but this is more about replacing Optifine, so. I will say though: you're gonna want to have Sodium too, if you download this. You know how heavy shaders can get on your performance.
CIT RESEWN - enables custom item texture stuffs that MCPatcher did, and Optifine then stole.
FORGE EXCLUSIVE
I'm gonna be honest, there's only so much you can do with Forge, as it's more of a heavyweight modloader. Still, there are some things you can do to lessen the impact (most of which are forks of Fabric mods like Sodium). Here they are:
OCULUS - fork of Iris that works with Forge.
EMBEDDIUM - Fork of Sodium that works with Forge.
EMBEDDIUM/RUBIDUM EXTRA - Don't worry about the Rubidium part, that's another fork of Sodium. THIS mod is a fork of Sodium Extra that works with Forge.
CANARY - fork of Lithium that works with Forge.
CIT REFORGED - A fork of CIT Resewn that works with Forge.
MODS WITH FORGE AND FABRIC VERSIONS
Here's where a bunch of other Optifine features come in. It's also where a bunch of the optimization mods for Forge sit, since they have Fabric versions too. Here they are:
PARTICLE CORE - optimizes particles. What else can I say?
ENTITY CULLING - stops rendering of things you can't see, cuz, why would you need to see it? You can't!
FERRITECORE - optimizes minecraft's memory usage on your computer.
MODERNFIX - from the mod's description: "All-in-one mod that improves performance, reduces memory usage, and fixes many bugs. Compatible with all your favorite performance mods!" couldn't have said it better myself.
ENTITY TEXTURE FEATURES AKA ETF - mod that allows for funky resource pack stuff that Optifine does in the texture department.
ENTITY MODEL FEATURES AKA EMF - mod that allows for funky resource pack stuff that Optifine does in the model department.
CONTINUITY - it's connected textures.
ZOOMIFY - option 1 of a zoom mod. It's VERY customizable.
ESSENTIAL - not a fan of the microtransactions, but it DOES let you host your own worlds and DM your friends IN minecraft. It also has its OWN zoom that I generally prefer due to it not smoothing the zoom at all (weird reason, I know). It's got a lot of nice features, really.
SODIUM DYNAMIC LIGHTS - Implements dynamic lights, similar to Optifine. Works with Embeddium too.
I think that's about it! Again, if I find any other noteworthy mods to mention, I'll put 'em here.
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