#Minecraft alpha

[yakartofelina]

Он всегда наблюдает...

He's always watching...

[like-this-post-if-you]

Like this post If you played Minecraft

.

[fauxfickle]

I want to build a historical center in my city but instead of IRL old architecture, it's early minecraft style of buildings

Old school MC architecture sometimes hits a bit different, y'know?

[sangummeo]

My two week Minecraft phase is hitting a bit different this time around…

[edwardos]

Wake up.

[magebunkshelf]

What if I streamed some Minecraft. Except...

What if I streamed OLD Minecraft?

I'm currently looking at Alpha 1.1.2_01 as the last version with the nuclear grass, but which was the best version in the golden era of Alpha & Beta?

I wonder if I could get a server running...

[chimneyeggs]

A collection of screenshots (in chronological order) of a Minecraft Alpha 1.1.2_01 mod I've been working on for *almost* the past month :3

[alumbus]

views from my Alpha Advanced world

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 19/04/2024

i love(d) you

Season 6 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume FF Also on: Now That's What I Call Quality! 3

Ripped by vvsvlogs

Requested by oetaboy and an anonymous reader! @oetaboy (Ask Box)

I'm sure this rip's been a long time coming for many - I know it has for me. I've had i love(d) you sitting in my drafts as far back as in March, but truthfully it's...daunting, to write about. Requested by two readers. Close to 200 thousand views on YouTube, and recently featured prominently in popular Clone Hero YouTuber Acai's "The Quality of SiIvaGunner" series. And the rip itself being an emotional gutpunch in a season filled with them, from a ripper who's already gutpunched me plenty with Wham! Into Dreams and The Paragoomba and the Wiggler. vvsvlogs, Vivi, I ask this with the most sincere gratitude possible - why must you do this to me?

Minecraft as a game has its emotional hooks in at least two generations of people - that much I think we're all aware of. A sandbox filled with endless possibilities, community, friends, individual stories of survival or of great creative endeavors, all wrapped in C418's hauntingly beautiful score, one I've discussed many times before with Fell From a High Place (Reprise), M-O-O-G City and Every Mob Wants To Rule My World. All of these rips are beautiful, yet they're all aiming to play with Minecraft's sound in some way - the former two rips are arrangement of its music with other games' instrumentation, and the latter rip is a melodyswap playing Everybody Wants To Rule The World. They all play on my senses in their own ways, they're all rightfully impressive - but nothing hits quite the same as Minecraft's own music, on its own terms. i love(d) you isn't aiming to impress or amaze - but it lands a full-on critical hit on one's heart through leveraging everything that's kept Subwoofer Lullaby alive for so many years.

I've talked plenty about my musical illiteracy, and so I hope it doesn't come as a surprise that I've never really listened to world-renowed singer Billie Eilish. She's been on the radio, I've heard Bad Guy, but it was never a name I gave much more thought beyond seeing her discussed online from time to time. You can imagine the absolute awe I was in when I clicked on i love(d) you when it first went up, already expecting an emotional hit due to the Minecraft song used, only to get goosebumps from Eilish's vocals alone. i love you is the penultimate song from Eilish's debut studio album, the very same that Bad Guy was featured on - yet compared to that track's bass-heavy, almost seductive energy, i love you feels remarkably personal, with little more than an acoustic guitar and piano accompanying the openly emotional vocal performance. It's sincere in a way I don't hear enough music be, as if a diary translated into song, much the same emotion that Because I Love You conveyed yet with even greater magnitude due to the vocals in play.

i love(d) you, uploaded for 2022's valentines day, wields both of these forms of love - the connections many of us have to one of the most impactful games ever made, and the unfiltered emotion of i love you - to create something unabashedly beautiful. Mashups aren't a novel concept, mashups are nothing new - yet one glance at the comments tells me that I'm not alone in finding this rip in particular to have struck an incredibly sensitive nerve. Because there's a beauty to Minecraft that I think many of us oft forget about. It's a game that we all cherish, yet also one that's very easy to have left behind: we have adult responsibilities, we have school, we have other, shorter, more concise games, we have social media, we have friends, we have blogs...the solemn beauty of playing the game itself is, for many viewers like myself, not much more than a memory, something that can feel ever so difficult to recreate without feeling as if something's wrong.

We...I'm...not a kid anymore.

There was nothing about i love(d) you's concept that necessitated it to be more than just the mashup. There rip had no need for visuals that'd help convey the edit like with Plantasia 2 or Luna, mi Amor, no need to tickle the funnybone like with SUNGORE or the hundreds of other YTPMV rips on the channel. Yet, halfway through the rip, to the tune of Eilish's soothingly reverberating vocals, the background begins to change, not to a bit, not to a reference nor easter egg...but to Minecraft. To where all of this attachment began - to a far-off view of the game's beautiful landscapes as the sun begins to rises. That digital world that looks different for every player, yet the same in everyone's hearts - that place that, no matter how many years pass, how long its been since we last played, we all love. Its impact different to everyone, yet the feeling unanimous. It drives home how well the mashup works not just as a mixture of two deeply emotional songs, but as music tied to a shared experience: all of our Minecraft worlds looked different, all of our personal lives look different, but we've all played the game, and we've all had affection for it.

Every moment I spend thinking about this rip aches in some way. It's been well past two years since it was first uploaded, yet it continues to follow me as the years go on, my mouse drawn to it any time it reappears in my recommendations. In being featured on 2024's Now That's What I Call Quality! 3, I think the team holds much the same sentiment - even as the months pass, i love(d) you is the kind of rip that'll never fall out of favor, never stop meaning things to people. And realizing that it was made by vvsvlogs, the very same vvsvlogs who's already made me far too emotionally vulnerable on here twice before, has only made it mean that extra bit more to me.

I'm not a kid anymore. I know that. But I'll always be grateful to SiIvaGunner, the people behind it, and those who follow it along with me, for being able to bring me back to that state of mind when I least expect it.

Thank you.

[repurposedmeatlocker]

I've recently gotten really into this genre of ARG that is based around classic nostalgic late 2000 and early 2010 video games. These don't seem to get half as much attention outside of their dedicated communities and I find it a real shame, because if anything I connect more to the timeframe these supposedly take place in comparison to other nostalgic types of video game horror ARGs based on early 2000 and 90s platform video games.

Thought I would list a few of these out. Most of them seem to be incomplete/abandoned unfortunately, but who knows. I really like the stuff that is built up here and hopefully more people start to consider exploring it in a more fleshed-out manner!

Old Minecraft Reuploads - This series hasn't been updated in 2 years, which is super unfortunate because it probably has to be my favorite of the approaches to this format! It is so effectively frightening without depending on any obtuse jumpscares. A majority of its eeriness comes from the ambiance already displayed in early Minecraft games. If you are familiar enough with playing them, you can kind of get the gist that something isn't right here. The immersion is super effective too. I'm not a fan of ARG's that hammer in their fictional and "otherworldly" elements too heavily. It takes me out a bit. All the glitches and discrepancies here feel like things that could actually happen, which makes it more scary! The last episode is especially frightening from the acting of the player alone. I never thought I could actually read fear in a faceless and voiceless screen recording, but it is SO impressive what evoked here. It is sad to me that I haven't heard much about this until now, and that it appears to be inactive. For what it's worth I would love for it to get more attention, even if just to see what is already there!

Gunslingerpro2009 and BadwaterVideos2009 - These two are not connected in any way, but they explore similar subject matter, so I feel it is appropriate to put them together. The format these base themselves on are classic TF2 gmod videos/animations. With the twist though that the ragdolls used in the game are sentient and being tortured/mistreated by the player/uploader. It is a cool concept I am surprised hasn't been played around with more with this genre. Absolutely recommended if you are a fan of that era of gmod content and psychological horror.

gmod9fan reuploads - This one kind of ends in a whimper and I don't think it is being continued (last update was 4 years ago), but the ideas being explored here are interesting. I think of the gmod ARGs it is the one that felt the most "scary" to me. Mostly just creepy stuff happening on someone's old gmod videos.

Classic GM Videos - I'm not the most invested in this one, but it feels worth mentioning nonetheless, and actually appears to be actively continuing compared to a majority of these. I would say my biggest complaint is the narrative that appear to be built here kind of fluctuates and doesn't have a strong amount of focus between the uploads. There is a sense that the creator is still figuring out what they want to say, but the Bob and Bill stuff is really captivating to me enough to keep an eye on it.

Minecraft Alpha 1.0.16 Versions - Still watching this, but it kind of appears to be an account under the pretense of uploading videos of a non-existent variant of Alpha 1.0.16. It feels a bit like a Herobrine-centered ARG, so if you are into that subject it could be fun.

Anyway, just thought I would find a way to bring some of these more into the spotlight since I find the approach really unique and fun. Not that I have a huge audience or anything, but anything to get the word out. I think the effort put into them deserve way more attention. Also, if you know of any other ARG's that fit this bill PLEASE feel free to let me know. I love this stuff.

[careeoki]

1.14 programmer art

[circlegirl]

A whole bunch of custom emojis I made for Mongster/Mahjong Blonsky on YouTube! These were super fun to make!

[dirt-piper]

Removing a Block.

From NSSS, to be specific.

Previously, most of the delays and pauses in NSSS's development were caused by other responsibilities - college, work, health, etc.

However, while these things are still contributing somewhat to NSSS's slow development pace, there is a new (and pernicious) factor that has been preventing me from so much as opening eclipse to work on the game.

Writer's block.

For the longest time I didn't even know why I had it, or even that I had it. I would keep opening eclipse, loading up some class file that I knew needed tweaking, and just... stare. I knew, essentially, what I needed to do. I knew how I would do it. But, for some reason, I just didn't do it. After a while I couldn't even get to the point of opening eclipse anymore. I attributed this to general busy-ness - I volunteer a lot of man-hours to a computer history museum, and this eats up quite a bit of my free time.

But then, when I took breaks from the volunteer work, and had all the time I needed to dig in to NSSS, I still just... couldn't.

What made this most frustrating was that NSSS still constantly occupied my thoughts - what I'd change, what I'd add, how this should look, how that should sound, how the launcher should work, what will be in the update after the update after next - all the time. My head was constantly bursting with ideas, but I just couldn't find the motivation to actually make them materialize.

Maybe it was because 1.1.12 was in feature freeze, and I was still banging my head against the cloud logic... but that didn't explain nearly enough.

Anyways, a user who had been playing NSSS since it was barely even 6 months old had reached out to me several months ago about possibly making some original music for the game. We chatted a bit about the general feel/tone/instrumentation said music should have, and then parted ways. This was about 10 months ago.

Well, last week they shot me a DM with one of the tracks they had been working on. NSSS was at the very bottom of my mind that day, but I decided to listen to it anyways.

The song was perfect. It was melancholy, soothing, and exciting, it sounded just like "minecraft alpha", it felt familiar and yet brand new, and it was exactly what I felt NSSS should have. And, as I wrote out my full thoughts to them as feedback (I'll spare you the full 10 paragraphs I wrote), it finally clicked for me why I wanted to make NSSS in the first place.

Previously, I always thought I had wanted to make NSSS because I wanted to fulfill my childhood fantasies, or to make a better minecraft than minecraft, or to polish the game as it was in 2010 and move it in a different direction.

But these are all closer to whats than whys.

Imagine returning to your family home and walking into your room and seeing it, not the way you left it, but exactly as it was when you were in elementary school, and there are toys strewn about the floor that you didn't even remember you had until that instant when you saw them again, and everything that was going through your mind, every tiny short-term memory that was in your head that day - what you ate for lunch, what you had to do at school the next day, what time Spongebob was gonna be on - are all just dumped right into the front of your conscious mind as if they'd never left.

But you're an adult. You're a different person. You can look at these things with a different perspective, see things that kid you never possibly could have. And that's never happened before. Like you've been handed a key to your own memories and told "go wild."

The past has been made brand new again. These aren't just dusty old memories that bounce around in your head, slowly getting distorted and thinned out over time. It's the very context that made those memories in the first place, and you're free to keep going from there, knowing what you know now, being the person that you are now.

This, above everything else, is what I have always wanted from NSSS. It's the mentality that has driven me to be so interested in history, period - it's why I volunteer at the museum, it's why I spent nearly a decade of my life archiving media from a certain other block game, and it's why I insist on using antiquated, obsolete tech for what it was intended for, rather than just letting it sit on a shelf looking pretty. I want to make the past brand new again.

After all, 'the past' is just a funny name we use to refer to the parts of the present that have already happened. There's no reason why it can't happen all over again.

To some extent, this is not an uncommon view - the term 'Nostalgia' exists for a reason. But 'Nostalgia', in my opinion, has the connotation of a biased, selective view of the past. It cherry-picks bits and pieces, either because they were remembered more positively, or because they are cheaper or easier to reproduce. A P.T. Cruiser may have 'vintage-y' styling, but it does not make the past brand new - it's too distorted and half-assed.

A few weeks ago I was hanging out with some friends when someone pointed out that Good Burger had gotten a sequel. I had never seen the original before, so we all watched it. Despite having never seen the film, everything about it - the set design, the acting, the fashion, the soundtrack - were extremely familiar to me, as though I had seen it a hundred thousand times before, but it was still brand new to me. And I enjoyed it! It was a goofy, somewhat contrived 90's movie with an only-somewhat-leaky plot and memorable characters.

Then, immediately after, we watched Good Burger 2 and I felt almost nothing. Part of that was because I frankly thought the film kinda sucked - the lessons Dexter learnt in the first film having been ultimately forgotten served to detract from his original character arc, for one - but the original movie was no paragon of writing either, so why did it get such a free pass from me?

Good Burger, despite my never having seen it before, managed to still seem familiar to me because, as a movie made in 1997, it had all the key qualities to slot right in as a movie I plausibly could have watched hundreds of times as a child. Good Burger 2, though clearly intended to capitalize on the 'nostalgia' that other people my age would have had for the original, completely missed the ball in that regard. It was no longer familiar, and thus, every other flaw in the writing, plot, etc. no longer got a free pass from me. It was no longer a 1997 movie with a 1997 movie's plot, it was a 2022 movie with half of a 1997 movie's plot and half of a 2022 movie's plot - it was half-assed. It, like a P.T. Cruiser, couldn't decide whether to be from the past or from the present and ended up in a weird, uncanny worst-of-both-worlds.

I've always been keen to be true to the historical context of whatever historic artifact I'm using - whether it be a typewriter, SGI workstation, palm pilot, or, in NSSS's case, an indie game from 2010 written in Java. It's why I develop NSSS using period tools and constraints - I use an old version of eclipse, maintain strict compliance with Java 5 (which came out in 2004), optimize the game for hardware that is now 20+ years old, built the entire website in .jsp, modeled the wiki after minepedia as it was in September of 2010, etc.

Because I'm not just doing this all to nostalgia-trip, I'm doing this to drag the past back into the present for us all to experience again. It's not going to be exactly as it was in 2010 - I do still want NSSS to be its own thing beyond just minecraft alpha 1.1.2_01 with bugfixes and QoL improvements - but it will be both familiar and new. It will have been made exactly as it would (and could) have been made back in 2010. And you can sit down and play it, and feel just as you did 14 years ago, not just in that you're playing the game as it was back then, but that you're playing a new game just as it was new back then.

As I put it in the discord server last year:

"I want to see someone who first played minecraft 13 years ago, back when they were young and wide-eyed and had never seen a game like it before, someone who got addicted and spent a solid week doing nothing but eat sleep & play, someone who almost pissed themself with fear the first time they got eviscerated by a creeper, someone who woke up their parents in the middle of the night shouting with glee when they found their first diamond, someone who fell in love with the game as it was then and stuck with it as it grew with them, changing and evolving and morphing just as they did, through beta and release and their highschool graduation and their first car and the combat update and the nether update and their first apartment when they finally let minecraft sit dormant on their PC for over a year, when they just lost the last remnants of the spark they had, and they don't even care enough to know why they fell out of love -

I want that person to play NSSS, shake off the cobwebs in their brain as they try to pull out the memories that have become faded and warped with time, just enough that they've forgotten just what this game did to them when they were younger, just enough that they expect the same old experience that they've grown more and more unenthused about over the years -

And I want them to get eviscerated by a creeper for the first time in 8 years and fucking shit their pants."

-DirtPiper

[foggydistance]

Boulder terrain features using new Regolith and Sparse Grass blocks I made.

[oilyfry]

2011

[edwardos]