Road to Minecraft 1.0, Day 121: Alpha 1.0.8(_01), 1.0.9, and 1.0.11 (Seecret Friday Update 6)

Sunday.
Real date: 8 February 2026
Time machine: 25 July 2010
Recorded playtime: to be figured.

Many changes in these versions; some major, some minor.

Alpha 1.0.8_01

Alpha 1.0.8 is a lost version, because Notch inexplicably threw his own (frankly already nonsensical) semantic versioning scheme out the window. Historically, even up to this point, he would "reupload" versions of the game without incrementing the version number if he made a minor mistake. In this case, he forgot to remove some debug code before releasing a1.0.8, and he needed to fix that for stability reasons (allegedly). In many past and future versions, he did this by replacing the existing version in-place. In this version, though, he added _01 to the version number. For some reason.

Thus, for all intents and purposes, a1.0.8_01 is a1.0.8. We will continue as such.

This version adds cows, leather, and milk, although milk is unobtainable in normal gameplay and serves no purpose yet anyway. My stay in this version will be short, since the only real gameplay change is that leather is used to craft armor, rather than wool. 

I loaded up the winter world and walked around until I found some cows.

I could not stop laughing at the sounds. They are so jarringly out of place. I'm going to assume C418 didn't touch these sounds, and Notch went and found these on his own in a hurry.

But yeah, cows drop leather, and leather can be used to make armor. That's about it.

Alpha 1.0.9

Our stay in a1.0.9 will be even shorter. The only changes here are to the player walking animation (in preparation for the reintroduction of multiplayer, I assume), the sounds of cows, and a darker pause/inventory background:

I guess the blue-tinted background was already removed a while back, but this finally brings the menus to the appearance they had for most of the game's history.

The old walking animation looked like this:

Silly flailing animation, and there's no punching animation. Honestly, I find this quite symbolic of the simpler days of Minecraft. I have many memories attached to this particular animation.

The new walking animation looks exactly as you expect:

There's still no punching animation, but I forgot to show that. You'll just have to take my word for it.

You can also hear that cows sound normal now, except I think they're still way too loud. Not sure why that is. 

That's literally all of the changes in a1.0.9, so let's move on.

Alpha 1.0.11

Alpha 1.0.10 only added the very buggy invite-only multiplayer test, so there's really nothing for us to look at there. I'm skipping it.

Alpha 1.0.11, on the other hand, adds quite a lot, especially for a Seecret Update. Clay and bricks have been added, with clay spawning near water. Reeds (which will eventually be renamed to sugar cane) have been added, along with paper, books, and bookshelves. Cactus now behaves as it does in the modern game, and milk can be obtained by right-clicking a cow with an empty bucket. The mining speed of snow is affected by shovels now, too, making it much easier to obtain snowballs.

Also, slimes. (Alpha 1.0.11 is kind of a legendary version in my mind, purely because of this video that I discovered as a kid.)

I don't have time to check out every addition in this version, and I suppose I don't really need to since most of these additions were basically unchanged between this version and release.

Because multiplayer technically kinda exists in this version now, there is a multiplayer option on the menu.

As you can see, it requires an invite code, which is shown as hash marks when typed.

The first thing I did was obtain milk... for no reason because it won't be useful for quite a while.

I then switched back to my first world and went on the hunt for slimes, as they're the what changes the most in upcoming versions. 

I encountered this very weird pocket that was spawning zombies and skeletons like crazy. Strangely, there were no slimes, despite this being quite low in the world.

Just a few minutes later, I encountered my first slime!

And then quite a few more. They really do spawn very quickly in this version.

And that's all the time I have for today.

Thank you, and have a very safe and productive day. 
--Sidney