Minecraft:Java Edition Infdev

Infdev (short for infinite development)<ref name=":0">Template:Tweet</ref> was the fourth phase in the development cycle of Minecraft:Minecraft. It was only playable in singleplayer Minecraft:Survival mode, and was the third Minecraft development stage to have some of its versions released to the public.

Infdev succeeded Indev when Minecraft:Notch decided to rewrite the game's code to allow terrain to be "infinite" and procedurally generated rather than finite. This principle of how maps are generated is similar to current Minecraft maps. Ever since Infdev, maps generate terrain theoretically 8 times the size of the Earth. Infdev was also the first appearance of the Minecraft:Far Lands. The edge of the map limits the world to 64,000,000 blocks by 64,000,000 blocks, or 4.096 billion square kilometers. For comparison, the Earth has a total surface area (including ocean) of 510 million square kilometers.

Features

File:OldInfdev.png

The first version of Infdev, with a noticeable brick pyramid in the distance.

• Giant Minecraft:brick pyramids spawn throughout the world in early versions of Infdev. The locations of the pyramids is predetermined, and was always the same regardless of the Minecraft:world seed, surrounding terrain, or game version. These pyramids reached from near the top of the world down to the ground. The base of the pyramid does not replace normally generated terrain except for water and air. 14 minutes after brick pyramids were added, a quick update was released that fixed a bug where the structures would assume the world height was still 256 blocks, generate as such, and then get cut off by the lowered world height of 128 blocks. It is a completely solid structure, with no interior rooms.
• Infdev also includes the first appearance of the Far Lands and the first legitimately observable distance effects. The Far Lands are not exclusive to Infdev; in fact, the phenomena of the giant distortion wall at ±12,550,820 and beyond would persist into the late Beta versions of the game, being finally removed in Beta 1.8. After the removal of the well-known feature which was the most common use of the term, it's since been re-used to describe the far areas of the map and their strange, shaky physics, as well as the end of the map at ±32 million. The position of the Far Lands changed twice in this version. Between February 27 and March 25, the Far Lands generated at ±33,554,432 and were just a giant solid wall of stone that went from sea level to the height limit, as well the end of the map was at ±16,777,216 and not ±32 million. On the March 27th release, the level generator updated from the Indev generator to the Alpha generator and the Far Lands as we know them came to be.
• "Infinite" map generation
• More Minecraft:craftable items
• 3D Minecraft:clouds
• Fast/Fancy graphics option toggle
• Much more complex Minecraft:cave systems
• Dynamic Minecraft:fluid system
• Minecraft:Signs, Minecraft:ladders, and Minecraft:doors
• Minecraft:Minecarts and their Minecraft:rails (powered, detector and activator rails were introduced later)
• Minecraft:Monster rooms
• Minecraft:Golden apples
• Wood and cobblestone Minecraft:stairs
• Minecraft:Saddles
• Minecraft:Obsidian Walls

Phases of Infdev

Template:Conjecture Infdev can be conceptually split into three conceptual phases, based on how the game was being updated at the different times. Note that these phases are not official, and are only present for convenience at explaining the updates to Infdev.

1. The first phase of Infdev lasted from February 27, 2010, through to March 25, 2010. This phase of Infdev was mostly for testing purposes, seeing as the player spawned with stacks of certain items in their inventory. Test structures, such as brick pyramids and Minecraft:obsidian walls, would generate throughout the world. This phase of the game brought all of Indev's features up to par with Infdev's infinite terrain.
2. The second phase started on March 27, 2010, and went until April 20, 2010. This phase of the game introduced the new Minecraft:Alpha level format and the ability to save up to 5 worlds in the client. The terrain generator changed many times throughout this phase.
3. After a hiatus of over a month, the third phase started on June 7, 2010, and ended on June 30, 2010. Since all of Indev's features had been caught up to Infdev's infinite terrain, this phase mostly added new features, such as doors, signs, ladders and stairs. This phase also introduced Minecraft:Seecret Updates, which added features such as Minecraft:minecarts and Minecraft:rails, and dungeons and spawners. On June 29, 2010, Notch started to develop the offline client of the game, which no longer required the Minecraft:player to use a browser to play Minecraft. These versions were the transition into Alpha.

Alpha replacing Infdev

Infdev's main purpose was to catch an infinite terrain version up to par with Indev's content, and this purpose became fulfilled by June 2010. Infdev was replaced by Alpha as a sign of progression towards release. Infdev no longer got updated, and its link was been removed from the Minecraft website.

Infdev, along with Minecraft:Indev, were still available on Minecraft.net up until September 2010. To play Infdev now, players must use the option for playing old versions of the game in the Minecraft:launcher.

Infdev's transition into Alpha was an arguably "gradual" one, as the June 29 through June 30 versions of Infdev slowly eased in the naming of "Alpha" instead of instantly switching to it.

Trivia

• Infdev was given its name as a play on words from Indev (which stood for in development); the "Inf" stands for "Infinite".<ref name=":0" />
• Infdev is silent since the Infdev resources have been removed from minecraft.net/resources (unless the user uses a proxy for the resources), but this does not happen to Indev.
• Breaking a Minecraft:block when directly on top of it would not show the breaking animation in Infdev.
• In early versions of Infdev, the Minecraft:player would start with 990 Minecraft:wood planks and 999 Minecraft:glass blocks.
• In the terrain.png (the file with all of the textures), two identical textures for Minecraft:gears could be seen. These would be replaced by the animated textures for clockwise and counter-clockwise gears in-game. The actual gear textures (which the animation is based on) were located in the misc folder, under the names gear.png and gearmiddle.png.
• In the same file, a strange and out of place texture could be seen below the Minecraft:sapling, which appeared to be a jumble of red, orange, and white pixels. However, it was later replaced with a solid red square, with the words "FIRE TEX! HNST" written on it. This texture is replaced with the animated fire texture in-game.
• There is a rumor that in the files, an unused level type called the "Skylands" could be found, which might've been a new file type for Indev (possibly the Floating world type).Template:More info needed
• From the February 27 to April 15, 2010 Infdev versions, mobs did not spawn due to a bug in the code. The April 15 version fixed this.
• Although only one version of Infdev is available through the launcher, all except three of the infdev versions of the game have been archived in their unmodified states on third party websites.
• If the player tries to play the first 4 versions of Infdev today (except Minecraft:Java Edition Infdev 20100227-1414, which is currently lost) without proxy or modifications, they may be kicked back to the main menu, or the game might crash with a java.lang.IllegalArgumentException error.
• The only Infdev version that can be found in the Minecraft:launcher upon enabling historical versions is Minecraft:Java Edition Infdev 20100618.
• 5 of the 32 Infdev versions known to be made are lost.

Gallery

• File:Notch Accidentally Shows Monoliths.png
• File:NotchPreview1.png
• File:NotchPreview2.png
• Infdev in minecraft.net/infdev
  Infdev in minecraft.net/infdev
• File:Minecraft Webpage Infdev 20100618.png
• The Minecraft:Infinite Map Visualizer
  The Minecraft:Infinite Map Visualizer
• File:Infdev map visualizer.png
• File:TerrainBug.png
• File:Kingbdogz Infdev.jpg
• File:Infdev Screenshot.png
• File:Wowc.png
• File:Gears does not show up on non-solid blocks.png

See also

• Pre-Classic
• Classic
• Indev
• Alpha
• Beta
• Minecraft 1.0