Minecraft Forge Modding Setup Part Two: Setting up the Eclipse IDE

Welcome to the second part of the modding setup tutorials for Minecraft Forge modders (and want-to-be modders)!

This time round we will be setting up our integrated development environment (IDE) which is simply a program that allows us to write code easily. For this tutorial we will use Eclipse. I will warn you now: even if you think you know what you're doing, never ever use Notepad!!! Notepad sadly cannot save files correctly, so even if you use it, it will save files as one single line. There are many other editors that can handle multiple lines of text, but Notepad cannot. Now that is explained, let's get going.

Part Two: Set up Eclipse

First, download and install the Java Development Kit (JDK) and Java Runtime Environment (JRE) from this website. The below image shows where to click. Remember where you installed them. If your browser asks you whether you want to download it, choose Yes. "?" and "????" refer to the versions of Java.
(Don't click the second button on the website if Minecraft runs fine or you know you have "Java". Generally games, programs and browsers refer to the JRE as "Java", but the JRE and JDK are completely different apart from the fact that they use the same programming language.)

Now, we need to download Eclipse from their website. Click "Windows 32-bit" (or "Windows 64-bit" if you know what it means) next to "Eclipse IDE for Java Developers" and again, allow the file to download.
Create a folder for Eclipse then extract the file to it using Windows Explorer or perhaps if you have a better one, any zip utility. Eclipse doesn't install itself, meaning you just need to create a folder for it.
As of writing, the current version of it is 4.2/Juno.
In Eclipse's folder, there is an "eclipse.exe" file. Run this file, and it should ask you about a "workspace" of some sort. We don't need to create one, but instead we'll need to find our Minecraft Coders Pack folder (inside the forge folder in your mod's folder), and use the "eclipse" folder inside it. You should also click the "Use this as default and don't ask again" option if you don't want this prompt every time you start Eclipse.

That's it for the two-part setup seires. Next time we'll get into the actual making of the mod file. Also may I mention that today (4th of April) is my birthday! Until next time, goodbye!