What makes Minecraft so unique is that it is one of the only video games where
you can play older versions of the game without doing legally dubious shananigans for acquiring access.
Another reason is that Minecraft is one of the only games with almost
no piracy counter measures other than obfuscating the source code, and creating mods is perfectly legal.
The way a Minecraft mod is loaded is that you need to use a "mod loader".
A mod loader is a program that starts the game and enables mods to modify the game while the game is running.
There are several Java program libraries in which the Java code can be modified at runtime.
Currently, the Fabric and Forge mod loaders use the ASM library.
There are several different program libraries for modifying the Java code at runtime.
The ones that I know of are ByteBuddy and Javassist, but there are more libraries available.
Additional libraries
What makes Minecraft so unique is that it is one of the only video games where
you can play older versions of the game without doing legally dubious shananigans for acquiring access.
Another reason is that Minecraft is one of the only games with almost
no piracy counter measures other than obfuscating the source code, and creating mods is perfectly legal.
The way a Minecraft mod is loaded is that you need to use a "mod loader".
A mod loader is a program that starts the game and enables mods to modify the game while the game is running.
There are several Java program libraries in which the Java code can be modified at runtime.
Currently, the Fabric and Forge mod loaders use the ASM library.
There are several different program libraries for modifying the Java code at runtime.
The ones that I know of are ByteBuddy and Javassist, but there are more libraries available.
Additional libraries