Minecraft Polyworlds - Revisting Older Versions
Sometimes, less is more
Polyworld: A minecraft world consisting of multiple terrain generators. Typically as a result of converting a world to a newer version.
Recently, I came across a channel on youtube documenting a player's journey as they attempt to play and update a Minecraft world, all the way from the very first version publicly available to the present day. It was, quite frankly, stunning what they had built. With just two (practically one) blocks, they were still able to let their creativity flow and create a pretty convincingly realistic portrayal of an early civilization.
A screencap of the world download
I'll be honest, I was pretty envious of this person's creative ability. It inspired me to follow suit not too long after. Thankfully, Mojang provides a decent (but not complete) archive of the version jar files all the way back to when the game was instead called Cave Game. Most diehard players are familiar with the early development of Minecraft, but to shortly recap, Minecraft, or Cave Game, was the original developer's attempt at salvaging a game that they abandoned after being inspired by Zachtronic's Infiniminer and expanding on its original ideas.
I've always been interested in the evolution of Minecraft, being as it is similar in age to myself. I've grown alongside it throughout the years. Both of us going in and out of phases. A childhood friend of sorts. But I would be lying if I said I was with it since the start. My introduction to the game was of course, from the internet, when the first boom of let's players kicked off on youtube. I didn't even get to play the game until much later, when I convinced my father to buy me a graphics card (yeah, back when even integrated graphics couldn't run Minecraft). Been playing it ever since then.
Which brings us to today. Despite playing so much, I've never actually built much. And I wanted to change that. I have grand visions, but never really been able to enact them. But when I came across polyworlds I just knew this was something I had never really seen before. It gives me a chance to feel like I'm rediscovering Minecraft again. So on March 24, I created a new instance of rd-132211 and started building.
The rules are simple. Starting from rd-132211 I had 10 Minecraft days (3 hours, 20 minutes) to build something. After that, I move the world to the next version and add n+10 days to the countdown. I didn't want to spend much time in these early versions (as to why, I'll get to that), but once I do get rolling, I'll be spending plenty of time in the versions with more substance. I'm limiting myself to versions that are available in the vanilla Minecraft launcher. As it turns out, early development was rocky and complex. Plus if I were to go through all minor versions I would be stuck in the alpha versions for years.
So, what did I build in rd-132211 (rd1)? First, I thought it would be nice if I labelled every terrain change near their edge chunks, and that's exactly what I did. To mark the beginning of the world, before any terrain updates, I marked rd-132211 in the bottom left corner of the world.
After starting my legacy, I quickly got to work on my first structure. I wanted something classic. Something I build a little too often to be completely honest. A castle. It was also something I figured I could do before the version change. Castles are also seen as the heart of a kingdom, which is more or less what I imagined what my world was going to be. I also didn't have to worry too much about details as castle look good even without them. It was mostly a matter of time that I finished. Except there was one small problem.
This version likes to crash. For no reason. And unlike modern versions, it does not save before a crash. Originally, I would pause my timer and catch up to where I used to be. But eventually, I decided if I wanted to get anywhere down the version pipeline, I would be better off running my timer during playtime regardless. I lost about a real time day trying to combat and diagnose this, but there is very little documentation on playing this version, especially on linux. Currently, I believe it's rd1 not playing nicely with my drivers, but I have no way to tell.
But I continued to trek on. Aside from the random crashes, rd1 does not have nearly as many QoL features as I am used to. You don't even get a crosshair until a couple versions from now. I also suffer from math skill issue, as I messed up some of the spacing on my towers a couple times, throwing my measurements off all over the place. The reach distance is also a little wonky in this version, horizontal placement is normal, but you can only reach two block vertically. It was really just small inconveniences, though. I even got the castle done under the allotted time.
Shot from afar.
Close-up of the main structure
Interior of the towers
Inside of the middle tower
I was actually having a lot more fun than I was expecting. I kept imagining what the world would like after conversion, thinking up of lore of what would happen to the residents who lived in this castle, and how the castle would age and look like to their ancestors. Eventually, it was time to transfer the world to rd2 (rd-132328). Not a big change, honestly. In fact, I was able to drag and drop the level.dat right into the rd2 instance (which will not be a running theme in the near future). Next time, I will go more in depth about the world conversion struggles, as well as update the additional features I bring to the world.
