GTAM Minute Tutorial - Editing the Bouncy Yellow Text in the Minecraft Menu Screen and Fixing the 'ZWN BSF' Problem (and Locating the Minecraft.jar file)

Yes, I had to put absolutely everything in the title. As many of you already know, the yellow 'bouncy' text that shows up on the Main Menu screen of Minecraft ("Splash Text") can be edited to display whatever you want it to say. The problem is, when editing that text, one weird 'error' that can occur is, just before your personalized text, a little box with ZWN BSF (it's actually ZWNBSP) can show up. I've seen this problem talked about on many different forums for a while now and as I was editing the file myself, I figured out this way of fixing it and thought I'd share it with everyone:

In this GTAM Minute Tutorial, I'm editing the Splashes.txt file inside the Minecraft.jar source file [in Windows] to simply say, "Game Mode: Hardcore!", when working on recording some future Hardcore Mode Playthroughs. I show the problem as it pops up while editing [it's a one-take video] and then immediately show the fix for it. I don't think this is the only way around it, but it solves the problem and worked for me multiple times and since people are still talking about it; I thought I'd throw this out there to help others.



To locate the Minecraft.jar source file the game uses (for almost everything including Mods/addons), there are a bunch of ways, here are some [N.B. - (3) works on all operating systems]:

1) If you are playing Minecraft in Windows, you could do a couple of things**:

 - Open Windows Explorer and in the top Address Bar area, where it says your location on your computer, type in
%appdata%
and it will show the location of the ".minecraft" folder, where game files are normally kept. There is a "bin" folder inside, it should be in there

 - Click on the Start Button/Orb and where it says "Search Programs And Files" type in
%appdata%
and it will show the location of the ".minecraft" folder, where game files are normally kept. There is a "bin" folder inside, it should be in there

- Open a Windows Explorer window and navigate to C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Roaming and this is the location of the ".minecraft" folder, where game files are normally kept. There is a "bin" folder inside, it should be in there

 **You may have to 'show Hidden Files And Folders' in Windows by opening a Windows Explorer window and pulling down the Tools Menu and choosing Folder Options. In here, click on the View Tab and under the Hidden Files And Folders category, select the 'Show Hidden Files, Folders And Drives' Radio Button and click OK. You may also have to UNCHECK the 'Hide Extensions For Known File Types' checkbox in the View Tab if you want to see the '.jar' file extension/ending

2) If you are playing Minecraft on a Mac:

- Open Finder and in the Go To Folder section, type in
~/Library/Application Support/Minecraft/bin
and it should be in there

3) If you are on most other OS's (such as Linux):

 - Run the Minecraft game and go to Options, then Texture Packs and choose Open Texture Pack Folder
 - Go up one level to the ".minecraft" directory and there should be a "bin" directory inside, it should be in there

 Have fun editing the Minecraft Splash Text for your video projects and See You In The Game!

GTAM Minute Tutorial - Editing Textures (Repairing A Deleted Branch In Leaves) with The GIMP

Playing around with editing textures for Minecraft (Tutorials on how to do that Coming Soon!) something happened that I think others would run into - it was a pretty minor/specific thing, but I'd like to share what I did and how I fixed it, just in case anyone ever runs into this little problem.

The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program, changed from General Image Manipulation Program) is a free editing application that is quite capable to stand up against most of the functions of Adobe's Photoshop and similar programs. Using it to edit the general Leaf texture portions of Minecraft's texture source, I accidentally selected and deleted a section of branch. Wanting to change the colour anyway, I replaced it but then thought that this might be something that could happen to other people, especially those new to graphic editing. I wanted to erase it again and record what I had done to repair the poor deleted branch and share it.

Perhaps for you it was deleted and then the file was saved, or perhaps you didn't notice it until a later step, where it was then inaccessible as a layer or similar problem. No matter what the situation, if anyone happens to run into this specific minor misfortune or even similar, it has spawned what will now become the first in a new series of videos I'd like to start, called Game Tips And More Minute Tutorials.

GTAM Minute Tutorials will be very short (60 seconds or less!) instructions showing how to do something very specific. I don't mean completing a quest or mission, I mean one thing, or at least a small number of steps, that complete one specific task. It may be editing or troubleshooting (the "And More" portion of this blog's namesake) or it may be how to jump high or shoot something in a specific game. Whatever it may be, in this time of short attention spans (who doesn't get crabby when the computer takes more than a second to do what you just told it?), all the tutorials/walkthroughs will be less than one minute. Really. Guaranteed! Not really.

In this tutorial, I show how to easily replace a deleted branch in a photo of leaves. That is something pretty specific; but the concepts presented, such as shading, blending and some general GIMP usage can be applied to many other situations and projects as well:

It is played back at 4x speed and states the steps being taken and basic concepts behind them. Being very specific in nature, not a lot of extra information is given, but this video is targeted towards people already editing [Minecraft textures for instance] and familiar with programs and games such as GIMP and Minecraft.
(I would like to do a full tutorial on how to extract, edit, import and save your own textures for use in Minecraft in the future)

Recorded with: Bandicam
- 'Rectangle On A Screen', 'For Edit Premiere/Sony Vegas' Preset
- 1280x720 (720p HD), 60fps, no Audio
- compressed to 720p, 30fps, 10Mbps, h.264/AVC for smaller upload size


Check back for more Game Tips And More Minute Tutorials in the future and See you in the games!