Java Edition pre-Classic

Pre-classic is the name given to the prototype versions developed before Classic. It was the very first development phase in Minecraft, lasting for a week. The phase was originally named "Cave Game" until the game was changed to "Minecraft: Order of the Stone" then to "Minecraft".

History


Pre-classic began when Markus Persson (Notch) started working on a "Cave Game". He was influenced to create the game by Infiniminer, Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Keeper, as well as one of his previous games, RubyDung.

The textures used for grass and cobblestone blocks were from RubyDung, and internally, the game's class files referred to it as "RubyDung". Other blocks and items were then added, such as saplings, dirt, stone, wooden planks, and more.

Little is known about this development phase, since it was never publicly released, and only Notch could test the versions. Every version in this phase could previously be seen in a few of the videos on Notch's YouTube channel, though most of the videos have been censored in most countries for unknown reasons.

The most well known version in this phase was probably the first version, the tech test released on May 10, 2009, as it was shown in Notch's.

Five pre-classic versions are now available to the public through the launcher, with the earliest being old-alpha rd-132211, originally released on May 13, 2009.

Additions

 * Physics
 * Cobblestone
 * Grass Block
 * Human mobs
 * Level Generator
 * Particles
 * Full Screen
 * Dirt
 * Wooden Planks
 * Stone
 * Saplings
 * Human Spawning: pressing
 * The Void
 * The ability to respawn somewhere else on the world by pressing
 * Placing blocks by left-clicking
 * Destroying blocks by right-clicking

Trivia

 * Breaking a block will not drop anything, because the ability to drop an item was not yet added.
 * When you go to the pre-classic game using the launcher, instead of it being called "Minecraft" it is simply titled "Game".
 * The name "Order of the Stone" was later reused in Minecraft: Story Mode as a legendary group of adventurers.
 * The naming system in this phase was "gi-ddhhmm", where "gi" stands for the game's initials ("rd" for RubyDung, an earlier project of Notch's, and "mc" for Minecraft in later Pre-classic), dd was the day of the month, hh was the hour released, and mm was the minute released, so rd-132211 was released on May 13 at 22:11 (10:11 pm). One exception to this system is rd-20090515, which just uses the full date in year-month-day format.