Java Edition Indev

Indev (or  In Dev elopment) was the third phase of Minecraft's development cycle and an older test version of Minecraft's Survival mode, which succeeded Survival Test in Classic Mode. Indev was phased out in favor of Infdev after infinite maps were to be added into the game.

Indev was initially released on December 23, 2009 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.

Players would play on a limited map with dimensions determined by the shape and size characteristics. Game play was dramatically different from Survival Test and paved the way for future game modes to come. Players now had to use tools and weapons, gather and prepare food differently, utilize crafting and smelting and be wary of the time of day. Like Survival Test however, players still had to save their map to a file on their computer and reload it if they died.

Indev's limited maps soon raised opportunity for a game changing idea. On February 23, 2010, Indev received its last update and work on Infdev started, a new mode that would use maps that would have no boundaries and would go on forever. Indev remained available on minecraft.net during Infdev's life and into Alpha mode. In September 2010, Indev, along with Infdev were removed from the site and cannot be played anymore. A few functions that Indev contained are no longer seen in Minecraft today, such as picking out map characteristics, having to save and reload maps and the isometric map viewer. These were replaced by biomes, automatic map saving, respawning upon death and a new infinite map viewer (which has been removed).

The Indev House


The Indev House was a 7 block wide × 7 block long × 4 block tall structure, with a 1×2 hole for players to exit and two torches on the interior. The House would be formed around the player's spawn point when they spawned. When Indev Houses were added, they were made of moss stone (which was unavailable naturally on the map anywhere else) and 4 chests, one filled with TNT, one with a full stack (99 at the time) of every type of block, another with every type of item and one filled with every colour of wool. As Indev progressed from testing items and blocks to testing the actual survival aspect, these chests were removed. Later, the design of the house was changed. The floor was changed to stone and the walls and roof were changed to planks.

Features over Survival Test

 * For a complete list of changes, see Indev version history.


 * Indev House
 * Inventory.
 * Crafting.
 * Map generation screen with configurable map themes, map types, and map 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.
 * Isometric screenshot captured with F7.
 * Decorative paintings.
 * Tools and equipment.
 * Farming.
 * Updated Mobs (better path-finding, varying difficulty options).
 * Day and night cycle (including a sun and moon).
 * New map format (.mclevel).
 * Firing arrows requires a bow.
 * Furnaces and Smelting
 * Torches and Fire
 * New mob sounds (when attacked, pigs made an 'oink' sound, sheeps made a 'bah' sound, while the hostile mobs and the player made the 'ooh' sound)
 * New title screen

Trivia

 * You cannot play Indev in the new launcher without your own .jar and .json file.
 * Indev's texture files contained the texture for the web block, though webs were not fully implemented until Beta.
 * There were textures for a chair block that were removed in Infdev. Any such block still does not exist, suggesting the idea was scrapped or has just been put off for a very long time.
 * If you try to play Indev today, without hacks or a proxy, you may be kicked back to the main menu or the game might crash.
 * Indev had no gaps in the bedrock layer, neither did Classic, though Infdev and Alpha (before 1.2.0) had them.
 * In Indev and Infdev, while in the inventory, the player's arm, while in first person view, would slowly sway back and forth. It is possible to move around while this happens. When you do, the arm will flop around randomly as if you were in 3rd-person. If you close the inventory, then the arm will pause in the position it was in while it was flopping around. You can reopen the inventory and it will reset the arm. If you use a crafting table, chest, or furnace, then you will not be able to move, but the arm will still slowly sway back and forth.
 * If you walked out of the map, you would be pushed back into to the level. The further out you went the faster you would be pushed back. This does not happen in 0.31 Indev.
 * If played today, Indev has sound, but Infdev does not. This is because Infdev resources were removed from minecraft.net/resources.
 * Indev contained a color pallete image titled "cube_nes.png", which matches the color pallete used for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
 * If you play Indev today, your character will have a completely black skin. This is because Mojang removed support for skins via Indev. You can still become Steve by disconnecting from the internet.
 * Mobs in Indev used the same hurt sound as the player.
 * In an early version of Indev, your character in the inventory screen was Rana, used as a placeholder.
 * The screen will sometimes crash when generating a "floating" map type.
 * There is a rare glitch that when you punch a sheep, it will drop magenta cloth instead of the normal gray cloth.