Sky dimension



The Sky Dimension was a planned dimension in Minecraft, intended to be the opposite of the Nether. Using the buffet world generation option, a player can generate a partial recreation of the original concept.

History
In Indev, there was a map type called "Floating." It generated floating islands full of terrain based on the World Theme.

The Sky Dimension was first announced when Notch tweeted a picture of the dimension. It was probably made to be like a "heaven," because the Nether was considered to be like a hell. The Sky Dimension was not completely confirmed until Notch released an update via Twitter stating: "And because PC Gamer made such a big deal of the Sky Dimension, I guess I'll have to finish it. Consider it confirmed."

In a live webcast on the Swedish gaming site feber.se Notch revealed that the Sky Dimension would "probably be a dream world" and that when "you go to bed there is a certain chance that you get dragged into the dream world instead. Then you will be able to do it on purpose later on."

The Sky Dimension was originally planned for the Adventure Update, but Notch put it on hold till the Nether was more fun.

"It didn’t work so well because of how light is calculated," Jeb explained. "The Sky Dimension originally had this top down light that the Overworld has, so you get like shadows in caves and such. But performance wise, it didn’t work - it was extremely slow. So we removed the sun – now everything is evenly lit unless you’ve got a torch."

And so the original concept of the Sky Dimension was later rebranded as "The End," a dark place fittingly referred to as the "end of the game," home to the endermen and the ender dragon, and a total conversion of the original idea.

Notch tweeted much later that a different "Skylands" dimension probably was still in the making. This version, completely separate from the End, was set to replace the original idea. However, Jeb later stated that returning the Sky Dimension was not planned and therefore is unlikely to be done.

It is possible to partially recreate the Sky Dimension through the Buffet world type. This is done by choosing the "Floating Islands" World Generation option and picking any Overworld biome (any type of Forest, Plains, Swamp, or Jungle) as the World Terrain option. This creates a partial recreation of what the Sky dimension might have looked like.

Mod-enabled version
Notch left data in for an early prototype of the Sky Dimension in Beta 1.6, 1.7 and 1.8. Using various mods it is possible to access this currently unfinished version of the Sky Dimension.

It could be accessed by modifying wr.class in beta 1.6.6, xa.class in beta 1.7.3 and acz.class in beta 1.8.1.

In this version of the Sky Dimension, the buildup of the world blocks-wise is very much like the Overworld, but it is always midday and it does not rain or snow (though cloud cover does appear as if it were raining). Although uncommon, it is possible to find sugar cane, redstone, lapis lazuli, and more rarely diamond. Like the normal world, you can also find dungeons, Iron, coal, and gold. The only mobs that spawn in the sky dimension are chickens; no other mobs (including hostile ones and squid) spawn. Below the islands of the Sky Dimension is nothing but the Void and a layer of clouds.

Bugs


Originally, the Sky Dimension was hidden within the region 0 (Overworld) code. However, starting in Beta 1.9 Pre-release 3, it was given its own region: Region 2, with Region 1 being the Nether. However, instead of Sky Dimension chunks spawning within its region, they would generate in the Overworld on Multiplayer servers. This is most likely due to an issue with map generation and saving causing Sky Dimension chunks to save over Overworld chunks rather than being made in their own, separate map files like the Nether does. If a world with Sky Dimension chunks is brought from multiplayer to singleplayer, the area of the chunks will always be Plains biome, even if snow generated naturally on the ground.

Trivia

 * The Sky Dimension is an inversion of The Nether, where as the latter is basically a large cave with monsters and a massive open space within, the former are peaceful floating islands spawn surrounded by open space. The Nether may also be thought of as being a hell with The Sky Dimension being a heaven; although the hazards present in each dimension are similar, falling from the sky dimension is just as lethal as falling from a cliff into the lava ocean in the Nether.
 * The Sky Dimension, similar to the Nether, has weather disabled. This is likely explained by the fact that it is above the clouds.
 * Using the Amplified world type, it is possible to get a world that looks somewhat like the Sky Dimension in Vanilla 1.7.2+, but the Ore distribution is the same as in a regular world (i.e. iron will not usually generate on the floating islands)
 * Far Lands do generate in Sky Dimension. But the way they generate looks completely different to The Overworld Far Lands.

Gallery
The first released screenshots of the Sky Dimension: