Java Edition Infdev

Infdev (short for  inf inite dev elopment) was the fourth phase in the development cycle of Minecraft and is only playable in single-player Survival mode, and was the third Minecraft development stage to have some of its versions released to the public.

Infdev succeeded Indev when Notch decided to rewrite the game's code to allow terrain to be "infinite" and procedurally generated rather than finite. This principle of how maps are generated is similar to how current Minecraft levels are. Ever since Infdev, maps generated terrain theoretically 8 times the size of the Earth. Infdev was also the first appearance of the Far Lands. The edge of the map limits the world to 64,000,000 blocks by 64,000,000 blocks, or 4.096 billion square kilometers. For comparison, the Earth has a total surface area (including ocean) of 510 million square kilometers.

Features



 * Massive brick pyramids spawn very rarely in early versions of Infdev. These pyramids reached from near the top of the world down to the ground. The base of the pyramid does not replace normally generated terrain except for water and air. The tops of these pyramids were commonly cut off. Little information is known about this structure because it is so old, and rare. The structure was used because there was no possible way to craft bricks.
 * Infdev also includes the Far Lands. The Far Lands are not exclusive to Infdev; in fact, they first made their appearance in Infdev. The giant distortion wall at ±12,550,820 and beyond, most people thought of as The Far Lands was removed in Beta 1.8; however, the term has been used since to describe the far areas of the map and their strange shaky physics, as well as the end of the map at ±32 million. The position of the Far Lands changed twice in this version. Between February 27 and March 25, the Far Lands generated at ±33,554,432 and where just a giant solid wall of stone that went from sea level to the height limit, as well the end of the map was at ±16,777,216 and not ±32 million. On the March 27th release, the level generator updated from the Indev generator to the Alpha generator and the Far Lands as we know them came to be.
 * "Infinite" map generation
 * More craftable items
 * 3D clouds
 * Much more complex cave systems
 * Dynamic fluid system
 * Signs, ladders, and doors
 * Minecarts and their rails (powered, detector and activator rails will come later)
 * Dungeons
 * Golden Apples
 * Wood and Cobblestone Stairs
 * Saddles

Phases of Infdev
One can split Infdev into, at most, three phases.

Phase one started on February 27, 2010, and ended on March 25, 2010. This phase of Infdev was mostly for testing purposes, seeing as the player spawned with stacks of certain items in their inventory. Test structures, such as brick pyramids and obsidian walls, would generate throughout the world. This phase of the game brought all of Indev's features up to par with Infdev's infinite terrain.

Phase two started on March 27, 2010 and ended on April 20, 2010. This phase of the game was mostly used to fix bugs in the game. The terrain generator changed many times throughout this phase, and a new save format was introduced, along with the ability to save up to 5 worlds in the client.

Phase three started on June 7, 2010 and ended on June 30, 2010. This was the "extra phase" of Infdev, since all of Indev's features had been caught up to Infdev's infinite terrain, and this phase mostly added new features. This phase saw the addition of many things, such as doors, signs, ladders and stairs. This phase also introduced Seecret Updates, which added things such as minecarts and rails, and dungeons and spawners. On June 29, 2010, Notch started to develop the offline client of the game, which no longer required the player to use a browser to play Minecraft. Since these versions only added new features, one could consider them as early Alpha versions.

Alpha replacing Infdev
Because Infdev's main purpose was to catch an infinite terrain version up to par with Indev's content, that purpose was filled around June 2010. Infdev was replaced by the name of Alpha as a sign of progression towards release. Infdev no longer gets updated, and its link has been removed from the Minecraft website.

Infdev, along with Indev, were still available on Minecraft.net up until September 2010, and to play Infdev now, players must use the option for playing another version of the game in the new launcher.

Alpha's transition was an arguably "gradual" one, as the version Alpha v1.0.0 was originally an Infdev version, which was only defined as being Alpha v1.0.0 upon the release of Alpha v1.0.1.

Trivia

 * Infdev was given its name as a play on words from Indev (which stood for IN DEVelopment); the "Inf" stands for Infinite.
 * Infdev is silent since the Infdev resources have been removed from minecraft.net/resources (unless the user uses a proxy for the resources), but this does not happen to Indev.
 * Breaking a block when directly on top of it would not show the breaking animation in Infdev.
 * In early versions of Infdev, the player would start with 990 wood planks and 999 glass blocks.
 * In the terrain.png (the file with all of the textures) remnants of the cog texture could be seen.
 * In the same file, a strange and out of place texture could be seen below the sapling, which appeared to be a jumble of red, orange, and white pixels. However, it was later replaced with a solid red square, with the words "fire tex" written on it.
 * In the versions misc. folder, the textures for the cog could be seen under the names of: gear.png and gearmiddle.png.
 * There is a rumor that in the files, an unused level type called the "Skylands" could be found in the files, which might've been a new file type for Indev (possibly the Floating world type).
 * From February 27 to April 15, 2010 Infdev versions, mobs did not spawn due to a glitch in the code, however the April 15 version fixed it.
 * Although only one version of infdev is available through the launcher, almost all of the infdev versions of the game are playable in their unmodified states through third party websites.