What Happened to Minecrafts SKY Dimension?

When the nether was added to minecraft in october of 2010 labelled as the hell dimension it was only a matter of time until players began wanting the opposite a sky or heaven dimension and notch agreed often tweeting progress about this mysterious sky dimension even going

As far as confirming it would be in the game i’m gonna wait with that in the skylines i was working on until the net there is more fun however players grew impatient and that led to the development of one of the earliest most famous and most impactful mods of all

Time the aether limited images and videos of an unreleased developer version of the game would still circulate on the internet however showcasing a fabled sky dimension notch was working on but then nothing ever came of it the mythical sky dimension seemed to be all but forgotten and to

This day newer players are still immediately crushed by their inability to create a glowstone portal in vanilla minecraft so what happened well you see before the a the mod the nether and even infinite terrain was a thing in minecraft way back in 2010 notch had experimented with a sky and even a hell

Weld in minecraft in dev 2010107 and now missing version of the game originally released in january of 2010 you were able to generate a map type shape size and theme notably for map type you could choose floating generating a map with the floating type gave you these quite cool

Floating islands which had decent vertical range especially considering how early in development the game was as for playability well let’s just say a lack of water buckets means that you’ll likely never get to touch majority of the map this is why most players at the time stuck with classic generation

Nonetheless this was still a big step in the right direction you could even use the shape and size settings to change how the floating islands would generate as you can see by these cool isometric screenshots i took another feature of the game which wouldn’t last you could have very narrow and vertical floating

Islands or more wide and deep floating islands there was a decent amount of customizability there was also the ability to generate a map with a hell theme the likely predecessor of the nether but more about that in another video anyways when minecraft would enter inf dev in late february of 2010 the world

Became infinite as such the map types shapes sizes and themes were all removed as they would no longer properly function with an infinite world type notch seemingly decided not to update them and as such we no longer had any floating or sky dimension but you know what you can do is update your

Subscription status to my channel and help me reach 400k subscribers we are well on our way now no pressure of course anyways the removal of the world customization was fine at the time though as most players were already enveloped in the rest of the game not really caring if there should be another

Dimension or not but when the nether would finally be introduced to minecraft alpha on october 30th 2010 that would all change the nether resembled hell it was dangerous very fiery and red ugly and dark where there wasn’t lava or fire even notch before adding it to the game

And deciding on the name the nether would refer to it as the hell dimension publicly convincing many players that it really was the underworld of minecraft upon its release players thought the nether was really cool and it sparked interest and discussion into a potential heaven or sky dimension the polar

Opposite of the nether to go alongside it this speculation would occur regularly on forums where players would talk about their own ideas for a sky dimension and how it would look amongst discussion of many other dimensions notch would entertain the players posting this tweet on may the 19th 2011

Some pics of the sky dimension thing i was working on last night linking these screenshots here pc gamer who had previously been given access to minecraft alpha versions containing the nether early wrote an article about notch’s tweet only hours after notch would then post another tweet a day

Later confirming that the sky dimension will be done and added to the game this confirmation excited players with dozens of articles and posts being made again discussing the screenshots and notch’s tweets some of these posts were interesting but most players seem to be in support of the sky dimension it

Seemed that patience would be their biggest enemy now on july the 22nd 2011 the ava mod would be released led by king b dogs otherwise known as brandon pierce and worked on for four to five months by a team of four other very well known and talented

Modders the aether was the first real sky dimension minecraft would ever see and oh boy was it brilliant the mod saw instant success with videos by the yogscast and venom and more released only days after the mod came out all racking up millions of views if not tens

Of millions the a the mod was intended to be the inverse of the nether where the nether had empty space in large solid areas the aether had large solid areas in empty space described as celestial the aether even had a very similar name to the nether accessible through the famous glowstone shaped

Nether portal that could be lit with a water bucket the ava fits very well into vanilla minecraft even allowing players to just jump off its floating islands to return to the normal vanilla overworld the ae the mod was not only answering the community’s cries at the time but it

Was by far the most complex and detailed mod of its era it featured many custom angel or sky-themed mobs such as flying cows whales and air bunnies amongst a myriad of unique hostile mobs and bosses scattered throughout there was a bunch of unique aether equivalents of blocks

And oars as well as many unique crafting recipes and tools but the aether went above and beyond being a simple sky version of the nether and featured custom dungeons and structures of which minecraft really had none yet in vanilla varying dungeon difficulties and so many custom items and crafting recipes that i

Couldn’t name them all seriously it took me like five minutes to scroll to the bottom of the original post besides the usual custom terrain and mobs the ava also featured custom soundtracks a variety of unique sound files new ores and controls new inventory accessories a custom title screen as well as gui and

So much more it was immensely ahead of its time the first comment on the thread summarized it quite well and was so well done that it fooled many early minecraft players into believing it was actually a part of the vanilla game how many of you watching right now tried to build the

Glowstone portal at least once in vanilla minecraft only to be met with immediate disappointment it’s a true testament to its popularity that all being said notch still had plans to make his own sky dimension and incorporate it into vanilla minecraft he would continue to reveal more information about his plans for it

Mentioning that the sky dimension would probably be a dream world no not that one that’s more of a nightmare and when you went to bed there would be a certain chance you could be dragged into the dream world instead that would likely get annoying however so he also

Mentioned that after this happens the first time you will from then on be able to enter it on purpose at this point the aether was already out and players began to speculate if instead of a new sky dimension being created not to just add the aether to the game instead are you

Going to incorporate the aether mod or skylands into minecraft we’re not going to incorporate those mods i think i’m going to wait with that in the skylines i was working on until the nether is more fun notchwood declined that however the comments on that video weren’t very nice originally the sky dimension was

Planned for minecraft beta 1.8 otherwise known as the adventure update but these plans were changed as notch stated he wanted to work on making the nether more fun first and as the game continued to grow in popularity more pressure was put on notch to get the sky dimension out as

Well as get the game out of beta however no public version would ever be released containing it and then later in october of 2011 jeb would mention on twitter that the sky islands had been rebranded to the end however four days before the release of the end notch would also

Mention on twitter that he was going to try to implement the skylands into minecraft at some point but that was the last time he would ever mention the sky dimension again and when 1.0.0 would release later that same year it contained a single floating island made

Out of one block and consisting of just endermen and of course the end the dragon surrounded by a dark cold and empty void far from the celestial detailed and whimsical nature that the aether had led players to believe they were receiving so what happened well jeb mentioned a couple years later in an

Interview that the sky dimension didn’t work so well because of how light was calculated stating it originally had a top down light like the overworld that allowed for shadows and caves and more but performance wise it was extremely slow this is also likely why the end

Dimension is so dark by the way while the end was quite a step or should i say staircase down from the aether players were adamant for the time as the ender dragon provided a nice distraction from the featureless dimension that was the end remember back when it was first

Added there were no end cities or other islands this was all players had access to jeb and dinnerbone would later confirm that they had no plans to return to the sky dimension and that was the end of that a disappointing end to what seemed like a promising dimension for

Minecraft which instead was turned to a boring cold bland and genuinely uninteresting dimension more about my complaints in this video but hold up then where were all these screenshots from well they weren’t from a snapshot or pre-release of the game so they must have been from a private developer version notch never released

And guess what thanks to method we have a recreation of that version right here which we can explore a beta 1.6.2 developer version from around the same time notch originally posted these screenshots as you can see while the actual composition of the terrain is just a basic biome the actual terrain

Structure looks very similar to the ae the mod and that’s because the code that was used here to generate these floating islands was the same code that the original aether mod used besides that the only passive mob which spawns are chickens and while some oars are obtainable you’ll never be able to get

Diamonds because the islands don’t go down far enough for them to generate and the generator seemingly wasn’t tweaked for this yet no hostile mob spawn even in the dark and there is no daylight cycle what we can distinguish from this however was besides the actual terrain generation nort still hadn’t really

Decided or come up with the new sky themed mobs blocks or features at all it seems that early into development the idea was scrapped in favor of the end why exactly well we may never truly know one leading theory is that when 1.0.0 released and jeb was made the lead

Designer of minecraft maybe he potentially disliked the idea of a sky dimension which is why he seems to be the one always stating on twitter that has been scrapped or converted into the end but that’s just a theory after all now there’s one more sky dimension secret that is virtually unknown in

Minecraft beta 1.9 pre-release 3 which was a pre-release version of 1.0.0 released in october of 2011 strongholds had these blocks constituting their portal these were the original texture of the n portal frame which could be repaired with isovender like so the original end portal frame texture seems much more cloudy and better

Representative of a sky dimension it was however changed one pre-release later so maybe the end was a last minute idea after the sky dimension didn’t work out which also ties into what jeb said about the lighting and performance issues it certainly would explain the end’s lack of features that’s for sure and that’s

The story of the sky dimension replaced by the end with the old idea seemingly abandoned interestingly if you go to the end in older versions of the game it actually says sky when you open f3 as the final remnant of what could have been i hope you enjoyed today’s video be

Sure to subscribe and help me get to 400k thank you all so much for watching