What was Minecraft alpha v1.1.1 update and why was it different?

Minecraft Alpha v1.1.1 (Image via Mojang)
Minecraft Alpha v1.1.1 (Image via Mojang)

Minecraft Alpha v1.1.1 was released on September 18, 2010. Early updates of Minecraft were known to be wonky, and this update was no exception. Unlike most, if not all other versions of Minecraft, Alpha v1.1.1 was only available for a couple of hours. As a result, there was no archive of it.

Many players wondered what made this update so strange. Down below is everything players need to know about alpha v1.1.1- what it was, what was added, what was changed, and why it was available for only a few short hours.


What was so different about Minecraft Alpha v1.1.1?

What was Alpha v1.1.1?

Image via Minecraft
Image via Minecraft

Alpha v1.1.1 was known as Seecret Saturday and was the tenth "seecret update" to the game. Seecret updates were a series of ten updates released by Notch during the Infdev and Alpha development stages of Minecraft. These updates often came without an announcement. They were named after the day of the week on which they were released.

Initially, all of the Seecret updates were released on Fridays, so they were called Seecret Friday Updates. Although, the tenth and final update was released on a Saturday, thus the Seecret Saturday name.

What was added to the game?

Image via Minecraft
Image via Minecraft

The v1.1.1 update added a few things to early Minecraft, including sneaking, new paintings and fishing rods. At the time, however, the fishing rods had no use. The five paintings that were added were graham, creebet, donkey kong, skeleton and pigscene. The developers added a few settings, such as the ability to change mouse sensitivity. They also added sliders to change the volume of sound and music.

Why was it only available for a few hours?

A screenshot of the glitched settings menu (Image via Minecraft)
A screenshot of the glitched settings menu (Image via Minecraft)

While many important items were added to the game, a very large problem also found its way into the update. Alpha v1.1.1 came with a nasty bug that led to players always getting a gray screen while trying to play. This was due to the gamma slider debug code. The corrupt code would set the display's gamma and contrast values to zero, resulting in the screen going completely gray.

As a result, this update was only available to download for 3 hours and 25 minutes. Developers were quick to notice the bug and fixed it, quickly releasing v1.1.2.

Is Alpha v1.1.1 completely lost?

For many years, Minecraft experts and players had thought of Alpha v1.1.1 to be lost. However, a player had been looking for the version recently when they came across a tweet by @Lunasorcery.

The tweet was from September 18, 2010, stating that there was a new version of Minecraft out.

After some bugging, Luna responded to the player's DM on June 25 and decided to go digging around to see if she had saved the rare update. After she plugged in an external hard drive that contained files from her old laptop, she found a Minecraft file with the correct timestamp. After a bit more digging, she was able to confirm that she did have the v1.1.1 update in her possession.

After looking at the timestamps of the files, it appears that Luna downloaded the update just 90 seconds before it was removed and replaced with v1.1.2.

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