Indev (short for In Development) was the second development phase of Minecraft's Survival mode, which succeeded Survival Test in Classic Mode. The Indev phase ran from December 23, 2009 to February 23, 2010, when it was phased out in favor of Infdev, after infinite maps were to be added into the game.
History[]
Indev was initially released after Notch received requests to let the community try out new features he was implementing. Indev version 0.31 was put to the public at minecraft.net/indev and available only to people who had purchased the game. New features currently contained a more complex and realistic lighting scheme than Classic mode's and support for MD3 mob models, demonstrated by Rana. Indev received 29 updates after this, gaining a few fundamental features to Minecraft as it went, which are listed below. During its lifespan, some updates were devoted mostly for testing new things, like Torches or Fire. As it progressed, its game play became standardized to that of Minecraft today, however with far fewer features.
When Indev was started, players were greeted with the newly added title screen, and the options to create a map or load a previous map. When creating a map, players had to assign four characteristics to their maps, the type, the shape, the size and the theme. The map would then be created and spawn them in an "Indev House". An Indev House was a 7 block wide x 7 block long x 4 block tall structure, with a 1 x 2 hole for players to exit and two Torches on the interior. The House would be formed around a player's spawn point. An Indev house began made of Mossy Cobblestone (which was unavailable naturally on the map anywhere else) and Chests filled with TNT, a full stack (99 at the time) of every type of Block and every type of Item. As Indev progressed from testing items and blocks to testing the actual survival aspect, these Chests were removed. Later still, the design of the house was changed. The floor was made Stone and the walls and roof were made of Planks.
New Features[]
- Inventory
- Diamonds
- Crafting
- Map generation screen with configurable map themes, types, and shapes.
- Dynamic Lighting
- Other food like Pork, Bread and Mushroom soup (later renamed stew) replaces Mushrooms as consumable food to restore health.
- A new tesselator to speed up the game.
- Third person view toggle with F5.
- Isrometic screenshot captured with F7.
- Decorative Paintings
- Tools and equipment
- Farming
- Updated Mobs (better path-finding, varying difficulty options).
- Day and night cycle (sunrise, sunset, midnight).
- New map format (.mclevel).
- Firing Arrows requires a Bow.
Trivia[]
- It was possible that features like Indev's finite maps would've returned in the cancelled game mode Zombie Siege.
- Indev's terrain.png contained the texture for the Web block, although it would not be added until Minecraft Beta a year later. The colored Wool blocks from Classic mode were also possible to obtain in Indev through hacks.
- There were textures for a Chair (and possibly a table) block that were removed in Infdev. Any such block still does not exist, suggesting the idea was scrapped or it has just been put off for a very long time.
- If one tries to play Indev today, without hacks or a proxy debugger, one will be kicked back to the main menu. On Indev 0.31 one will crash with a Null.Pointer Exception. Sometimes this is caused by some folders or additional jars to be missing, but mostly the minecraft.net/indev login system removed. (Recently, someone patched and fixed the 0.31 .jar and made it playable on the new launcher).
- Indev has the first appearance of tools ever. The first un-placeable blocks were armor and bows, later shovels, then swords, pickaxes, axes, and then the latest hoes.
- Indev had no gaps in the Bedrock layer, like Classic. Although Infdev and Alpha (Before 1.2.0) had them.
- On February 1, 2010, there was a new feature to the dirt surrounding the background, It was moving up then rather staying still. This was never used in future releases.
- There was an exclusive theme in Indev and Infdev that a theme exists with the name Hell. This was removed after Minecraft Indev and Infdev.
- Axes were Battleaxes in the January 11, 2010 update as one can see: (Look in the inventory bar).
- The first version of Minecraft Indev 0.31 was actually Creative mode on December 23rd, 2009.
- In the January 11, 2010 update, when one was in one's inventory, one's character model was actually Rana which was quite interesting.
- Textures for the Torch and Sapling had a pretty dark shade for unknown reasons in older Indev versions.
- On the January 11, 2010 update, there were three stats, ATK, DEF, SPD, all were set to 100. It was in the Inventory while next to your character. Notch presumably didn't remember why they were added there. He also said they were probably added for "vague plans". Also, the stats had no use. Minecraft could've been stylized as an RPG game, but this is possibly false.
- On the January 26, 2010 update, when you spawned in The Indev House, there were chests that contained all blocks in the game.
- On January 22, 2010, while the new update was made, The axe became backwards as the other part of it was removed. It was later fixed to be the axe we know today.
- On February 12, 2010, you could've spawned with a set of armor in the latest Minecraft Indev update. It is pretty interesting. It was at the time when Notch started testing armor.
See also[]