You've never heard of these Minecraft versions. Why not?

[Music] on august 1st 2021 a video surfaced online it was entitled entry point and it was from a mysterious channel called minecraft alpha 1.0.16 versions the video was very low quality and shows some gameplay from an early version of minecraft things seem pretty normal until about 40 seconds into the clip the player minds a tree and turns around suddenly a dark and shadowy figure is seen in the distance startled the player opens up skype and sends several panicked messages to one of their friends however when they return to the game the shadow player is gone it's an unusual video from a strange channel but if we examine it more closely we see some odd details for one the footage was recorded on alpha 1.0.162 released in august of 2010. deepening the mystery is the description i remember this world it was started in single player however we used to run it on a server until he unknowingly got accepted into the tests he got banned for distributing the jar to someone outside of the tests that being me it's nothing personal six after all he's back with us now this description offers more questions than answers distributing the jar accepted into the tests what exactly have we stumbled across here what is this channel about this is merely the entry point into the long and winding maze that is the minecraft alpha 1.0.16 versions [Music] [Music] entry point is not the only video that was released on august 1st in fact there are two more the first is entitled version01 the login screen tells us that the person recording has the minecraft username exorcist 6890 this tells us that the player recording must be the same person from the previous video while this video is short there are a couple of anomalies first of all the version number is alpha 1.0.160501 this is a version that does not have any sort of record on the minecraft wiki the last known version to exist is 1602 somehow this video appears to be a recording of an unknown version while the gameplay seems to be normal there's a subtle difference here the moyang logo is not the same as the one that was used during this time frame on the left is the logo that had been in effect since alpha 1.04 and on the right is the logo from the video it's a change that while seemingly minor is still difficult to understand this brings us to the third video uploaded on that august day it's called the search it's about two minutes long and it includes exorcist and a player called djp 155. the description says we try to find the thing from a previous video we couldn't find it the video shows the two players chatting and attempting to find the shadow player though no matter what they do everything seems to be normal there's nothing special about this video whatsoever that seems to make sense though during the year of 2010 notch released several updates called the secret friday updates they were released on certain fridays and were accompanied by a tumblr post the version of this gameplay footage is 1.0.17 which is the eighth secret friday update curiously this version is also a missing version but even so there are no known anomalies such as shadowy players appearing randomly let's take a step back we have three videos so far with three different versions the first is 16 2 the last is 17 and the middle is 160501 the version numbering seems to indicate that it should slot somewhere in between 16 2 and 17. there's another implication here if this is 16 5 then where is 16 3 and 4 and of course there's the other bewildering issue why do none of these versions have any records of their existence a salient attribute of 160501 is that it has a second underscore number not typically used by the naming scheme this is what the title version 1 is referencing 160501 the reason for this is not clear why would there need to be such specificity in fact it appears that the entire channel is dedicated to these specific versions at this point the investigation the reasoning is far from obvious a video released the following day only deepens the mystery the description tells us that this is the only found footage of version 3 and sure enough it's 160503 once more this is exorcist's recording as we can see the same desktop background as the previous videos from the very beginning things are just a bit off the opening shot has a few subtle issues with it notice how the brick texture is slightly different a bit more on the gray side furthermore the torch geometry is altered adding a bit of a guardrail to the edge as we continue the video exorcist leaves the house and jumps into the water they stumble across an iron door on the riverbed kind of an odd location after examining it for a few seconds exorcist leaves the water and heads back up suddenly out of nowhere a player join message appears although there is no username panicked exorcist leaves the game and the video ends a nameless player joining is certainly unexpected but it's actually not the weirdest thing in this video if we return to before the jump we notice that there is a cobblestone bridge across the river leading towards the hill with the house but once exorcist exits the water the bridge is gone it's an eerie detail that's very easy to overlook yet there it is a few days later another video was released called version05 it has the description just footage of me walking around i want to believe that the thing with the weird white doors is just a glitch but on this version i can't be sure this is exorcists playing in the same world although they've upgraded to version 5. there are a few more texture changes sand dirt iron ore and ladders all look slightly different now exorcist goes down to do some brief mining when they return they notice that there are iron doors on the house yet when they enter from another side the iron doors are gone another example of a disappearance the following video is entitled version six the label tells us that this is a multiplayer test this is the longest video so far it follows exorcist and djp as they work together on construction in a multiplayer world there are several additional tweaks in this version the menu bar has a changed texture and there are now blue and white flowers as the players move on to building a basement we also see that there is a new window block with an odd shape about 6 minutes into the video something very strange happens after exorcist goes to check on the windows djp mined some stone blocks on the floor upon the final break we see that there is something revealed an undulating floating rod in the place where the stone block used to be but it's just out of sight of djp from his location he would not be able to see this anomaly apparently oblivious djp places a new tile block and covers it up suddenly he freezes and then he's gone exorcist asked where he went in chat and gets abruptly kicked the error message says that the account has been temporarily suspended from online play because the session is unauthorized if we slow the footage down we see an additional peculiarity a few frames before exorcist is kicked there's the sudden appearance of two iron doors where djp used to be at the end of the video we can see the changelog for this version on the minecraft website it says that the build date is the 22nd of october 2010. wait that can't be right secret friday 8 was released on august 20th 2010 and that was version 17 but this is version 16 and yet the date is listed several months after version 17. this oddity plants the seed of an idea in our minds what if these 1605 versions are a fork we know about the main chain of development of minecraft but could it be possible that at some point there was a split leading to two consecutive development lines occurring independently this is one way to explain why many of the changes we've seen so far do not ever make it into the main versions because they're on a totally different path a hidden fork also shows why none of these versions are listed on the minecraft wiki these videos are from an apparent second chain of development no longer affiliated with the main one suddenly the unusual things we've been seeing make a lot more sense as the version number increases so too does the number of slight modifications they also stack with one another changes in version 5 carry over to version 6 and so on and so forth in this video we also get our first look at a change log several entries or modifications that we've already discussed including texture changes multiplayer and user interface tweaks but then there are some other things such as a bullet about fixing bugs regarding shadow players there have been several videos of mysterious players joining or being seen in the world could these be the listed shadow players apparently they didn't always work as intended there's also a bullet point about recruitment being enabled it seems to occur by selecting accounts automatically furthermore there is a play tester id that matches the id of exorcist when they're kicked things are starting to come into focus now exorcist is a play tester who has been randomly selected to play on these 1605 versions at the bottom a message informs the play testers that these versions are not to be disclosed anywhere including screenshots and videos this potentially explains why these versions are so unknown they were intentionally kept hush hush so why are we suddenly seeing videos of it now did the person who runs this stumble across the footage and decide to leak it the descriptions of the videos so far appear to reinforce this idea there's a mix of quoted and unquoted material which implies that each video has an outside source the person running the youtube channel may not be exorcist instead there's somebody whose goal is to collect as much footage of these versions as possible we see evidence of this in the following video the description talks about managing to find more saved footage although a jar remains elusive this video however is probably not recorded by exorcist we can see that the user is running windows vista instead of windows xp furthermore the play tester id is different on the changelog page version 7 was built on october 24th two days after the previous iteration the changelog holds another nugget in the form of a comment you all can't behave yourselves the guidelines clearly state you may not distribute the provided software this rule alone had over 50 violations on the day of release alone when we started the multiplayer test if you were kicked out of the game with the error message session unauthorized this was the cause that's exactly what happened to exorcist on the previous video and presumably djp as well this may be why no footage exists of them for version 7 and we are instead watching the gameplay of a different person speaking of which if we view the video we see more and more minor changes including a new furnace block different heart containers a tweaked pointer and some new ui about 23 seconds into the video a shadow player appears named obstruction the player is totally invisible except for the name tag and is apparently immune to attacks near the end they send a message one warned again to why it seems as though this new player hasn't been following the rules either then the channel went dead for a few weeks with no new footage uncovered of these alpha versions but the wait wouldn't last forever on august 31st a new video was released and this one was different let's read the description we paid them mo yang so they let us do that and even gave us access to the auth system how the project manager pulled it off is beyond me don't reveal my name chances are they still know who i am the full version along with some other videos is on my ftp server i don't think i need to say this but do not post these full videos anywhere until i give you the green light and what you're seeing here in this video is me playing the fact i even got to record this without being caught is already something the anti-leaking policy was strict as for what i do in the video get real who wouldn't screw around with other players worlds like this especially back in 2010. the message is from someone only known as six for the first time we get to see the other side the clip shows gameplay footage of someone presumably a mojang employee they're running the recruitment client and it's shown that this is a recruitment in progress with the option to disconnect or accept the candidate the developer built several upside down tees in the world then a player named samurai 2001 appears and the video ends since this video was shot on a camcorder we can see some of the desktop as well on the left side is a text document it begins by explaining that unauthorized recording is not allowed something that the description tells us that the employee clearly knew then there are four guidelines for recruitment the first explains that the client must be on a certain version and the second ensures that the client is not being run on the development branch the third is more interesting it says that the player character must not be discovered in game if it does happen they should tell management and not attempt to take down any images that appear on the internet finally the fourth bullet point gives some guidelines on what types of players are ideal candidates let's briefly pause and consider what we have in the summer of 2010 minecraft had a fork in the alpha versions with several new alphas that were distinct from the main minecraft version these alphas were closed only certain players were allowed to be playtesters they also had new features including ui changes and new blocks additionally there were shadow players who were apparently mojang employees who would mess around with the world with the goal of recruiting people this youtube channel represents a location for any sort of footage that has been discovered regarding these versions what's not yet clear is the motivation for this why were things required to be so hidden why couldn't people share screenshots or employees take recordings and why is it that it's taken over 10 years for any sort of information regarding this to emerge how is the creator of the channel finding this stuff we get some insight into that final question on the next upload unlike other videos this one is from 2021 as we see some conversations in a modern discord client it's a group chat called alpha version 05 players and there are three members there's a decent chance that one of these people is running the channel from the messages a user named orable was apparently able to find a jar and this video shows an attempt to run it the person recording is dj 155 probably the same person from the exorcist videos over 10 years later here he is again he downloads the jar from discord puts it into multi-mc and runs the game shockingly it works he creates a new world and walks around as he looks into the distance he notices that there's something out there and when the cursor is pointed at it the game lags curious dj swims closer and discovers that it is an iron door with a different texture sure enough whenever he looks at it the cpu usage skyrockets as dj explores he stumbles across several more of these doors that have naturally generated in the middle of nowhere after the third door the game crashes with a message unable to connect to main servers dj returns to discord to tell the news but a username machine rage seems perplexed apparently this wasn't supposed to happen since this version isn't connected to the server there were these things that happened when the pc was connected to our servers but this version isn't one of them machine range talks as if he was one of the people on the inside our appears to be referring to mojang or at the very least the development team is machine rage the same as six i think there's a decent chance unless the team was able to convince multiple developers to talk about this project regardless the discovery of a playable jar file of one of these versions is a huge step towards understanding what is happening here a week and a half later more footage was discovered this time from version 10. this video shows a multiplayer area where you could go to different worlds the description gives us some more detail the idea was these doors would spawn in your world and you would open them and you would end up in a hub area this area was hosted on our servers and other players who were there could see each other you couldn't use chat and it was not a bug it was an actual decision to disable chat in this area for a more interesting experience the players we accepted into our tests however turned out to be smarter than the project leader expected and started building their skype names out of blocks and would communicate that way the video shows just that exorcist has apparently been unbanned as a skype window tells us that they are the one recording they craft a lever and use it to enter an iron door the game shows a loading screen for joining the hub and suddenly exorcist finds themselves in a totally new place the hub world is a bizarre back rooms type of location with a shimmering blue green color scheme this world contains other doors and other players such as bug nation exorcist follows bug nation and is able to enter their iron door leading to a new world this video explains a lot about the purpose of some of the oddities that we have seen especially the iron doors yet mysteries remain for example why is it that when the jar was run in 2021 doors still existed in game according to the description iron door shouldn't appear if the game can't connect to the hub world server and surely the test has long been concluded there's no way that these servers are still running right soon thereafter another internal footage video was discovered recorded by dev6 the video is about three minutes long it shows dev6 fixing bugs that are reported on the website while we know that this is version 1605 it is unclear what subversion it is during debug we get a peek at some of the internal code including lists of packages and methods on the surface this is somewhat dull but there are some intriguing things if we look a little deeper the date is august 27 2010 this confirms one of our theories development of these alpha versions was occurring simultaneously alongside the main versions as by this date mojang should be well into 1.0.17 however a comment on the bug website seems to suggest that the october dating on the download page is incorrect from this we now know that versions 6 and 7 are from august 22nd and august 24th not october this entire project so far has taken place over the course of less than two weeks but these sneak previews into the development process of the 1605 versions are just the tip of the iceberg six days later a video called developer preview was posted to the channel the video itself is nothing groundbreaking while it shows some features such as a new door texture overall it's just standard gameplay what is interesting however is what's in the description for the first time a jar from one of these alpha versions has been released to the public there's a link to a file it's possible to use this jar and open up the game before we continue there are a few things i want to mention running programs downloaded online is inherently risky and unfortunately it is difficult to know for sure if a given program is malicious while you are free to do as you wish i must make it very clear that i make no guarantees or claims about the safety of these files use your own discretion and if in doubt don't run jars you have downloaded online stay safe out there also if you're enjoying this video so far feel free to subscribe and hit the bell it really helps me out alright now back to the video the jar only gives 40 minutes of game time as it is just a preview upon starting it we can choose to preview single player the game play within does appear to match the videos however to really see what's new we need to extract the jar and poke around the internal files the jar has a multitude of notable things hidden inside and is by far our deepest look into the project as we expect there are many new items some of which we've seen in videos for example the items.pnd file includes a strange new green powder furthermore there are also two new disks if we dig around some more we can find the audio associated with these one is called hidden din and the other is called lemuria let's take a listen [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] clearly both of these tracks are new and it doesn't appear as though they were written by c418 the style is wonky and edgy there's also the addition of three background music tracks including moon 2 norway and sad way [Music] these tracks are much more aligned with the minecraft music that we expect and evoke more calming feelings the jar also has new block textures many of these have been seen in previous videos but there are a few that haven't such as a green torch that can be lit and unlit as well as a new green ore there are several new blocks as well the purpose of which remains unclear the minor differences continue with the mob textures most of which have been tweaked slightly but this is relatively boring compared to another major change the paintings are different there are two texture files one corresponding to the original paintings and one with totally new paintings some of them appear to be images from in-game such as this one of a house or this one of double iron doors at least one of these connects to a real life painting a portrait of a poet named lermantov from 1837 this direct connection to a historical figure is notable though the reason for it is mysterious this painting replaces the wanderer above the sea of fog painting which is also based on real art that's not the only painting with the real world connection however one painting appears to be of the crab nebula a famous supernova remnant there are some other paintings where it seems plausible that they also represent photos but concrete connections have yet to be found there are two paintings that are derived from the original minecraft paintings for example this one is a modification of sunset dents by subtracting one from the other we can see the difference between the two similarly this painting is a slightly modified version of plant once again the meaning remains unclear this painting appears to be a monkey and a top hat there's also a painting that may be of a minecraft cube of some kind as well as a painting that says demo then there are the paintings where it's difficult to tell what they even are with abstract shapes and colors this one in particular seems notable as there's almost a pattern of four colored squares perhaps there's a code embedded within although i was unable to find it finally the splash texts are different of the seven listed in the file six of them are totally new including the somewhat ominous knows where you live if we continue to explore the jar we find a strange folder called sample which contains three labeled dat files these files take up a relatively large portion of the overall file size what are they well it turns out that if we run the jar outside of multimc it dumps these files as png images they are titled s1 s2 and s3 all of them are dark screenshots of gameplay unfortunately we do not yet know their purpose things went silent on the channel for a while eventually a new video was found let's go ahead and watch it together [Music] let's break this one down early on while the player is crafting we hear a door open and close several times although there is no door nearby as the player walks up the stairs we get a brief glimpse of another shadow player watching from a distance the description says that this is a recruiter but apparently this version was released after the team had disbanded yet all of that pales in comparison to the ending when we stumble across a bizarre window-like block while we may initially think that these blocks are a recording of the past comparing the two shows that the player took a different route that leaves a somewhat chilling possibility what if this window doesn't show the past but the present is that shadow player right behind them walking up again we have a video that leads to more questions than answers after it was released we have our largest gap in between videos to date the next video would not be found until early november this one is an unrestricted preview not much happens in the video it's the description that's truly interesting because once again we have a jar file what's that two jar files client and server that's right we have our first multiplayer version but there's a problem when we try to run the game it asks us for a key to find it we will look at the description we will be able to figure out how to find it after all we found what i've hidden in the first preview that could be referencing several different things from the textures to the music yet the most clearly hidden things were the images disguised as a different file format sure enough if we look in our new jar there are three more dat files that we can convert to png s3 is an image of a darkened cave with a torch but unfortunately we don't see any sort of code here s2 does have a number written on scrap paper and it turns out that this is the code that we need to get into the game how about s1 well if we adjust the colors we can see that there is a set of numbers hidden in the top right corner it turns out that this code enables cheats this is how the developers were able to spawn in items in the internal footage videos it's possible to pause the game type a number and hit plus to spawn it minus clears the selection with enough time a list of every possible item can be found there are about 30 new or modified blocks and 16 new items there are a couple of other notable things in the jar for example there are two additional background songs including ballroom pianist and nordic sanctuary take a listen [Music] it's at this point in time that the story takes a bit of a turn by now this mysterious channel had gained a bit of notoriety and there was a group of people on a discord server who were following the uploads closely they created a multiplayer server for this version on november 2nd 2021 and sometimes when they played online weird things would happen shadow players would join the game the first sighting began two days after the server was made when a user noticed that there was a strange man within the trees soon thereafter an invisible player named desecration appeared they left four bizarre messages in chat you made it work did you well i guess i can't do much technically you're not breaking anything so might as well let you be farewell later that day an unnamed player joined the server they started sending cryptic messages such as question marks at one point they sent a long hexadecimal number putting it into a translator it reveals the message walk upon derelict halls the following day a user named artificiary joined and left four numbered messages these blocks are fake they are not of nature they are special creations artificial on november 10th a different user named a probation joined and sent more numbered messages testing input lorem ipsum dolor met 54321 input working leaving a probation site this was soon followed by a poem with seven messages again the beginning the first one of all again the new milestone at large at home you won't need these again not anymore soon the ante is rising much like a monsoon and on this high note i must leave a storm is coming soon a revoir these five sightings caused the team to change their approach they set up a player to act as a security camera on the server and it worked the camera caught two players joining obstruction from version seven and construction first construction blocks off the view of the security camera player we can hear blocks being placed out of view after about 25 minutes the barrier is removed revealing a staircase perhaps it is the staircase to knowledge there were several more examples of invasion players for a total of 12. i've listed the dates here the meaning of these incidents is not clear the messages ranged from humorous to completely bizarre and despite their occasional hints they provided little in the way of actual explanation the next video released on the channel was called feature testing and it shows a totally different world each chunk has a name and there are floating crystals in the sky these crystals can be broken and put onto these weird lily pad blocks which can set zombies on fire the description claims that this is the last version to ever exist it's so far removed from the normal minecraft as to be approaching the level of unrecognizability a few weeks later the third and final internal footage surfaced dev4 is recording and dev6 shows up in the video early on there's an absurd number of new players joining leading to confusion amongst the developers later the footage cuts to a linux desktop where they are in the hub world they eventually use an iron door to teleport to an overworld location where they build for several minutes we do get some cool shots of the creative inventory again the most interesting things to appear are in the description there's a link to a file called ost.rar and shockingly it contains an entire soundtrack for the game some of these tracks have been heard before although there are several new ones including rostrum pattern ponder and faux divinity [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] there's also an album cover and track list where we learned that these songs were composed by five the metadata has some noteworthy things for example moon2.ogd is listed as moon 2 on the album cover but fiored in the file there's also this strange symbol on the cover finally the rar file has a comment that contains a weird number of some kind labeled 7 are there more related numbers to be found the description also contains a link to an image file extension 1605 lily pad release notes the new game mode is the most interesting part of this but right now we don't know what that is the following video released also shows footage from version 13. the player walks around the world at night and kills some monsters suddenly a health bar for the giant of kipan shiagasu appears there it is out in the distance the player attacks and kills it using a new type of sword this video appears to be recorded by someone new it's a desktop that we have not seen before if we take a look at the description we find some interesting details what i haven't told you yet is that we were the ones that started off rd rd was a much bigger project it was closer to an actual finished game and minecraft was just their side project they used to experiment on 1605 was a side branch which attempted to implement some of rd's ideas this does confirm our theory that these 1605 versions are a fork of minecraft what's interesting here is the use of rd that stands for ruby dung which was the direct precursor to minecraft there only exist a few screenshots of it however this description says that ruby dung was apparently much more fleshed out than what we've seen of it so big that minecraft was the side project these new versions represent a return to some of the ideas from ruby dung another piece of footage was uploaded in early february entitled presentation apparently this was designed to be for e3 but it got rejected after xero refused to tell them the company name the background music is an 8-bit version of ballroom pianist although it's in a different key from the ost the footage appears to take place on orville's world from version 7. it does show a new super long jump as well as some sort of power meter near the end orville joins the world and the person recording is revealed to be information as they question why orville is here warble says that they didn't allow xero to use their world when the video wins [Music] and then things went dark it appeared as though everything had been discovered regarding these versions for over two months there was no new information by this time i'd started production on this video assuming that there would be nothing left to find suddenly on april 16th 2022 a new video called discovered was released unlike other videos it's a slideshow of 14 images most of them appear to be taken from development versions including one that is from a dev citing incident but the final four are different there's a text which says want to see you explain these zero the next image says mcpe 0.9.0 weird thing i did not build with some sort of structure then there's a screenshot of a 2015 forum post asking about if this was a new feature of some kind finally there's an image that appears to be from java of this same malevolent structure but that wasn't all for the third time a new jar was included this one was called lillypad qa however the game is not playable unless you enter your qa preview key obtaining a key required me to send an email and the key was included in the response once the key is obtained the full game is unlocked this world is much different with labeled chunks and a dash move as well as the new lily pad seen from the video there are also giants that spawn in the world we notice that the image from earlier is associated with this version including the new game mode from the title screen it is possible to change the game mode to frail in this mode there is only one heart of health portrayed as a glass vial upon death the vial breaks and the game tells you which milestone you were able to get to milestones are roughly equivalent to days if you manage to survive 10 in-game days then a numbered code will be revealed this code is interesting because it's associated with the particular account used to play the game however there are actually 5 numbered codes that can be discovered with enough different people playing it's possible to find all 5 codes this lilypad version already has cheats enabled through bruteforce it was discovered that an item id 120 gives a gray block when placed it opens up a screen asking for an input after entering three codes a hex number is sent to the minecraft game log what's it for though a look into the extracted files in the jar yields some interesting things for example there are four new cave sounds take a listen [Music] [Music] even more intriguing are two mysterious dot rar archives in the root folder called ph1 and ph2 ph1 is password protected but if we put in our hex number from the input block we can access the archive it has a comment this is rd i swear to god this is rd the version code is different but this is what we knew as rd this is where we took the features from to implement into 1605. why does it say 04 though what the heck is this inside the archive is a single file called stdout.txt opening it reveals the link to another youtube video this video is the first with no description and it's also the first unlisted video the title is simply four question marks a player walks around a foggy world up top we see that this is 1604 and a new code is also listed things in this version look weird the geometry of the player and mobs is all messed up as the player explores they stumble across a huge mysterious structure imposing its will in the fog if we look more closely one of the images from discovered is taken exactly from this video a connection whose meaning isn't entirely clear beyond that however this video offers little in the way of explanation four question marks is the final known video it's the most recent release on the channel and as of the production of this video nothing new is known we've spent most of our time together looking at the evidence but what is actually happening let's shift gears for a bit and think about it all together [Music] the total amount of evidence to sift through is massive there are 19 videos and three playable versions i've done my best to give you a brief overview of them but the reality is that i can't show you everything there's just too much to see with nearly an hour of raw footage obviously i'm still trying to figure this out but let me give you a brief overview of what's happening here to the best of my understanding this channel is a found footage channel that means that most things that are uploaded are footage that have been discovered from elsewhere such as on old hard drives some of these are from random players some are from developers and some are unclear what they have in common is that most of these videos are from versions of minecraft alpha that are not known to exist from the descriptions we can tell that these versions were developed separately from the main minecraft versions with a different team some things imply that this team is no longer a part of mojang as mojang is sometimes referred to as a different entity in the descriptions this separate development squad consisted of seven developers numbered zero through six dev zero is often referred to in a negative light and it appears as though they are one of the leaders of the team dev1 is seen on the bug fixing website dev2 is not explicitly referenced but we can infer that they do exist dev3 is the one who created the cover art for the ost dev4 has made a few recordings dev5 has written the ost music dev6 recorded at least two of the internal footage videos and may have also been the one to supply some of the jar files we still don't know the ultimate purpose of this project while there have been references to recruitment through the use of shadow players the reason behind the program is unclear we do know that it was intended to be top secret and that not everyone was allowed to be a play tester for them the fact that the presentation was designed for e3 implies that at some point this project was going to go public but for whatever reason that never happened these alpha versions have several new features becoming progressively different from the main minecraft series one important aspect is the ability to create doors to a hub world and access other players worlds there's also a new game mode many new blocks and new mechanics such as the dash attack furthermore as seen in the videos these versions have a tendency for anomalies to occur sometimes it appears to be the developers messing with players but other cases it's not so clear what's happening the strange thing however is that anomalies still do occur even in 2021 there are several recorded instances of various players joining a server and saying cryptic things this combined with the confusion in some descriptions implies that for some reason this program possibly still exists although once again the details remain unclear one thing that makes this whole series a bit peculiar is that it takes so long for there to be any sort of puzzle the first 11 videos don't lead to any obvious action on our part when the jars start to get released the community was able to solve some of the puzzles nonetheless there is still much left to discover for example ph2.rar has yet to be decoded it's anyone's guess as to what exists in this archive prior to my work on this much of the available information was scattered across various sources one reason that this video took so long to produce was that i spent a lot of time making a google slideshow that compiled all of the known information in one place much like i did with old root i've linked it in the description you will be able to see everything that the community has found each video has a label starting with 0 1 going up to 19. this will hopefully make it easier to ensure that we are talking about the same evidence as we discuss since we're here i want to brainstorm for a bit and see what clues might be hidden there are some details that i didn't mention for time's sake for example there are different resolutions and frame rates for different videos also some have sound and others don't occasionally the sound in a video doesn't match the expected sound from the footage there might be some reason for this there are videos that have moments where they cut out briefly those are logged on the slideshow there are also videos that have frames that are suddenly blurred for example feature testing has 10 blurred frames with various numbers of boxes on the left side this may just be a compression artifact but maybe not beyond just ph2.rar there's a good chance that there are other secrets hidden within the files as an example some of the ost tracks have bizarre audio spectrograms which may have a code hidden within the cave sounds have a mix of mono and stereo as well as an inconsistent sample rate two of the jars have numbered png files disguised as dat files codes have been discovered in two of these however there remain four more that don't have any clear meaning it seems to me that there's a good chance that something is still hidden here could it have anything to do with the atypical resolutions how about the inconsistent bit depths anything could hold a potential clue on a more technical note it's possible to decompile the java classes using a tool such as recap there may be some sort of clue hidden in here such as this strange message not this time timothy unfortunately much of the code appears to be intentionally obfuscated so not everything will be so easy another idea is to go through and analyze what specifically has changed from version to version perhaps there's some sort of clue embedded in these differences yet another angle would be to analyze the sightings in more detail these events have produced many chat messages none of which have been used in a puzzle thus far it's possible that something important exists there one reason that i wanted to make the slideshow was to ensure that these sightings were recorded for the future there are a few minor things to mention such as in the unknown version video where the player opens the chest in a specific order or perhaps there's a clue in the bug tracking website seen in one of the internal footage videos the channel is loaded with details and there are certainly more to be found or maybe the solution has yet to be released as i mentioned there are still new videos that are being found on this channel we really have no idea how far along this project is perhaps it's mostly complete or perhaps we're at the very beginning i've worked on this long enough where i'm hooked i really want to see where it goes if it wasn't already clear this is an arg at least i think it is it's so high quality and high effort that there are moments where i have questioned if this could possibly be real either way there's some sort of story here that we need to understand one that is presently unsolved this is a relatively unknown channel and the community attempting to solve it is rather small per their request i will not be posting a link to that discord as they would prefer it if the community remained tight-knit therefore i'm going to create an alpha version project channel in my discord this will be an excellent place to discuss what you've discovered and it will soon become the primary location for conversation about this topic the link is in the description i'm really excited to talk with everybody and see what you're able to come up with unlike old root this arg is still very much in progress there's a lot left that we have yet to figure out so take a look what are we missing is there any new angle here i'm really excited to hear from you [Music] we will start wrapping things up it's been a fascinating experience to dig through this stuff and i hope you enjoyed it as well the attention to detail is tremendous there's even a whole soundtrack if you want to dive in i'm going to leave a link to the channel in the description also don't forget that there will be a place for discussion of this on my discord come on over and join us for our journey i'm very excited to see where this takes us i want to give a special thanks to the following people who are very helpful in the production of this video we will go ahead and end with that this has been arjun thank you so much for watching and i will see you all in the next video have a great day [Music]

Channel: RetroGamingNow

Views: 2,111,154

Keywords: Retro, Gaming, Now, RetroGamingNow, RGN, Let's, Play

Id: _d5hEiYIKKU

Length: 47min 37sec (2857 seconds)

Published: Tue May 24 2022