Cave game tech test

A version officially referred to under the titles Cave game tech test  or Cave Game tech demo is the earliest publicized unreleased version of what would become Minecraft. It was made on May 13, 2009, between roughly 16:48 and 16:55 UTC. This version was never released. A video of the game at this time was recorded by Notch from around 17:00 UTC and uploaded at 17:36 on May 13. It is the earliest known version of Minecraft, or what was then known as Cave Game, to have been recorded.

Cave Game

Edition	Java Edition
Official name	Cave game tech test Cave Game tech demo
Date developed	May 13, 2009
Downloads	Client not archived
Cave game tech test rd-132211 ►

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Development of the game started around May 10 or 11 to May 12 at the latest, and continued up to May 13, 2009, adding the features that would be later seen in the Cave game tech test video.

Features

Blocks

Air

• Not listed as a block at this time.

Grass Block

• Made with the same graphics from Notch's game RubyDung.
• Grass appears on fully lit tiles on the top 7 layers of the map.

Stone

• Made with the same graphics from Notch's game RubyDung.
• Its texture at this time would later be repurposed for cobblestone.

Non-mob entities

Player

• Currently has no model.
• Has a height of 1.7 blocks.

World generation

Chunks

• Take about 0.1 of a second to generate.
• The size of each chunk is 16×16 blocks.
  • Chunks are 16×16 blocks instead of 8×8 because 8×8 chunks decreased performance.
• Chunks are loaded in order of their proximity to the player.
• The player spawns in a 256×64×256 tile map.
  • The game takes 20 seconds to generate a 256×64×256 map.
• "Caves" pass from the uppermost layer of the grass block to the penultimate layer of stone.
• It was possible to fall out of the world, but it would not kill the player.

General

Light

• The lighting engine in Classic and Pre-Classic was simple, with only 2 light levels, bright and dark.
  • "Sunlight" is emitted by the top edge of the map and hits any block that is under it, regardless of distance. It passes through transparent blocks to light blocks underneath.
  • Blocks that do not receive light are in a dim shadow that remains at the same level of brightness no matter how far they are from a light source.
  • Blocks which are darkened also have a layer of thick, black fog applied to them, appearing darker when looked at from further distances. This caused weird visual glitches.

Controls

• The player could respawn by pressing R, teleporting them to the world they were in.​
• WASD key was used for movment
• space key was for jumping

Creative mode

• This was an extremely basic version of it. The player could not fly or place/remove blocks and there was no inventory or hotbar to get them from.

Video

Original

Note: All videos from Nizzotch, Notch's YouTube channel, have been region-locked in all countries recognized by the UN, but there is an archive of the video available for all countries.

Archive

Gallery

• 

  A cave.

• 

  Chunks were loaded very slowly in this version.

• 

  The "bedrock layers" in this version.

• 

  The ground in this version.

• 

  A deep pit, with a contrast of light and dark on the left and right to illustrate the simplicity of the lighting engine at this version.

References

• "lwjgl IRC logs" (archived) – Echelog, May 13, 2009 (UTC+2).
• Rotab's IRC logs on Archive.org; #minecraft.20090525.log. May 25, 2009 (UTC+2)