Codes and Secrets in a Forgotten Minecraft Version

Codes and Secrets in a Forgotten Minecraft Version

[Music] on April 1st 2020 moyang releases a version of Minecraft unlike any other contained within is a virtually infinite number of Dimensions by throwing a book into a nether portal it creates a link to a new world based on the text there’s a huge variety of possibilities places of order chaos Beauty ugliness Simplicity and complexity it is easy to get immersed in the boundless spaces the realm of unlimited possibilities however the 20 w14 infinite update has another side to it one that’s not immediately obvious beneath the surface is a plethora of oddities unexplainable elements and secret codes most of these are unknown to the average Minecraft player but the few who look more deeply will find that their efforts are rewarded there is far more to uncover than it seems from the very beginning there are some subtle hints that there’s more to this version than meets the eye one of the first Clues can be found by loading a world in creative mode when we open the inventory we’ll discover that the items have been mysteriously shuffled no longer in The Logical order found in the base game this difference while minor suggests that perhaps we need to take a closer look at this list scrolling through we’ll notice that there are a couple of blocks that are unique to this version not found in the base game one such item is humorous in nature the swaggiest stairs ever are stairs made out of a netherite block perhaps an expensive Flex for a late game World another new block is called the curs it is a regular Cube that changes color every second switching between the textures of green and black concrete but the reason for this Block’s existence is not yet clear the most compelling Edition is called the box of infinite books after it has been placed in the world right clicking on it produces well a book it could be thrown into a portal to visit the corresponding Dimension the title of the book is several numbers separated by slashes with some experimentation we can learn that the sequence is generated using information about the bookshelf itself including its location orientation and distance from the edge of the chunk one consequence of this is that each box of infinite books produces one specific book infinitely many times not a new book each time let’s take a look inside opening one reveals that there are 16 pages of gibberish text much like the title this changes depending on the bookshelf we can’t yet tell if this is pure Randomness or if there’s some sort of hidden meaning perhaps examining the author of this book will provide more information but the mystery has deepened further the author’s name has been replaced with a sequence of chaotic rapidly shifting symbols in vanilla text like this is only found in one other place the obscured words written by the narrators of the end poem to understand this more let’s exit Minecraft and look at the game files the player data file contains information about the player including inventory items by using an NBT editor we we can take a peek inside and it is here that we find the author of the book universe itself it’s a cryptic name and it serves to pull us even deeper into the mystery now there can be no doubt that there’s something special about this version of Minecraft we are merely scratching the surface before we get carried away let’s take a step back and see what moing themselves have to say about this update the official announcement provides an introduction to the game alongside a YouTube video it gives an explanation of how to make a portal it also includes some funny bullet points we learned that this snapshot does not use blockchain and that there is an advancement for visiting 1 billion worlds called you’re almost there it also has no bugs seriously who said anything about bugs but beneath the comedic veneer are hints of deeper things to find such as the point saying that moing added deep and engaging lore using immersive environmental storytelling there’s also talk of minger sponges Square spheres and a three-dimensional turn machine we see similar examples in the video worlds that seem a bit more structured than the average random Dimension these must be accessible in game but how one item of interest is a quote from someone named BOS Bach this is a relatively unknown moing developer at this point in time their Minecraft weki page contains just four sentences but here he’s talking in an official announcement bto’s words imply that he was involved with the creation of this snapshot with a bit of digging we can find that Bach is active on the r/ Minecraft commands official Discord server and it quickly becomes clear that he was the developer of 20 w14 infinite we can scroll back in time to the very moment when the version was released with the simplest of messages check your launcher most of the early exploration of this snapshot is carried out by members in this community with the presence of Bach occasionally pushing their research forward the first example of this occurs mere minutes after the snapshot’s release when boach sends a video to the chat it’s gameplay footage Bach opens a book and quill and types missing then he throws it into the portal the recording ends just before he teleports so let’s try this creating a portal to missing upon teleportation we find ourselves in the sky somewhere the world around us is empty or is it if we fly around long enough we’ll eventually stumble across something rather interesting it begins with three Beacon beams slicing through the sky as we approach a structure emerges from the fog it’s quite strange there’s a quartz B with Glowstone Rings a pair of iron golems flank the sides but they’re lifeless they do not react to the player even if attacked beyond the glowstone is a three Beacon pyramid composed of netherite gold and diamond stairs lead up to the top these are the swaggiest stairs ever that we saw in the creative inventory at the Apex is a lone chest within are two of a new item Footprints these don’t actually do anything instead they’re a reference to a footprint particle that was introduced in a snapshot from 2017 but the particles were never used in game and they were eventually removed altogether these footsteps appear to be a call back to this the missing textures have been found there is one final detail that’s easy to overlook beneath the steps is a sign that says this is not a sign this is an illusion to the famous artwork the treachery of images just as that pipe is not really a pipe this sign is not really a sign instead it’s glowing pixels on a screen missing is unlike any of the other worlds we’ve seen instead of random generation it’s been specifically constructed to match the word in the book and suddenly we see a path to finding the additional special worlds referenced in the announcement we can teleport there if we know what specific world name to use there’s a dimension that’s referenced in both the text and the video that of a minger sponge this is an example of a 3D fractal it can be constructed by starting with a cube splitting it into smaller cubes and removing the center repeating this again results in more holes and the proc process can be continued indefinitely and apparently one of these exists as a special world so what might the book word be well let’s try the obvious sponge when we enter the portal we do indeed teleport to a world composed solely of a massive minger sponge appropriately enough it’s constructed out of sponges back on the Minecraft commands Discord server it isn’t long until users realize that the slw command can be used to teleport to a specific world no book or portal required Buck suggests that you users Try /warp Green leading to a world where everything is Green Tinted blue and red are logical next guesses and these create appropriately colored Dimensions but just a few minutes later something far more intriguing is found a user named wacky discovers a dimension named ant we find ourselves in a flat world of white a sign at the center says patience beneath it is a weird block that’s moving around as it progresses the color of the ground changes flipping some of the white concrete to Black this is an ant block it has no item form and it only appears naturally in this Dimension while its motion initially seems chaotic and unpredictable slowing down the footage reveals a hidden method the ant moves step by step and it follows three simple rules if the ant is on a white square it moves one step to the right if the ant is on a black Square it moves one step to the left finally whenever the ant moves it flips the color of the square it was on watching the ant go it’s hard to escape the sense that there’s something fascinating in embedded within this system how is it that this ant with just three Simple Rules produces complex and seemingly unpredictable patterns this is a question asked by Chris linkton a computer scientist at the University of Michigan Chris invented the ant and it Bears his namesake as Link’s ant this experiment exists in the truly captivating field of Cellular automa in which basic constraints can lead to extremely complicated emergent Behavior some of these emergent properties are far more advanced than we might think is possible for example Link’s ant can actually be used for computations a 2000 research paper shows how any Boolean circuit can be constructed by changing the colors of the starting grid this ant is the three-dimensional turning machine teased in the announcement video but linkedin’s ant has an unexpected surprise if we follow the science command for patience and watch it for about 8 minutes the ant will eventually stop its chaotic motion locking itself into a repeating Highway pattern from the chaos emerges Simplicity and predictability it is why L suspected that any starting grid will eventually result in this highway but it’s never been proven we don’t know for sure by this point users on the Discord server are discovering new Worlds at a high rate Bach is still here to give hints he sends a message with warp custom this generates infinite Stripes of black and yellow concrete the sign says under construction I owe you one custom world this for Shadows custom World Generation a feature which would be added to Minecraft later that year soon thereafter usern named o finds the dimmension named [Music] Library this one is special from the bottom to the top are rows and rows of boxes of infinite books each with their own unique volume written by universe itself between them are walkways and ladders allowing for access to to each book extending indefinitely in each Direction this world is a representation of the library of Babel described in a 1941 short story written by Jorge Luis bores the story describes a library containing every possible 410 page book somewhere in this library is any conceivable text any imaginable piece of information any beautiful poetry any depressing monologue it’s all here all combinations of letters would exist somewhere but unlike the library of Babel each shelf in this Dimension holds not just a book but a world every single one is the key to a new random Place Library provides us a small taste of the immensity of possibilities for a given SE there are 2 to the 31 unique dimensions that’s over 2.1 billion worlds to find and they’re all somewhere on these shelves in a certain sense this Library encapsulates the core nature of this April Fool’s update a deep commitment to the infinite The Mystery of the cursor block is solved soon after the discovery of the library Bock sends a message saying that the cursor lives in the terminal warping there takes us to a giant version of the MS DOS terminal with the cursor blinking in place unfortunately it’s not functional but it’s cool nonetheless this is a throwback to one of my more uh experimental videos about old screen savers if you want to watch something weird go check it out later as more and more worlds are found a question naturally emerges how many custom worlds are there Bach provides an answer with this quote okay so here’s a deal there are 43 special dimensions 42 of them can be accessed with a single word to this point nine have been discovered it would take only 75 minutes for users to find the rest some of these dimensions are variations on the regular Overworld for example slime covers the landscape with a 10 block thick layer of slime The Busy World replaces ores with mineral blocks and Redstone components the biome is called biome for player with no time for nonsense another is the blackl dimension here light is inverted so that blocks look brighter at lower light levels and darker at higher light levels Darkness makes the world well dark and holes ads well holes Decay is an interesting one at first it looks like the standard Overworld but as we travel from the center we’ll notice the occasional misplaced block the further we go the more noisy it becomes eventually the chaos is so intense that there’s little more than vague impressions of the shape of the terrain there are a few Dimensions that change the colors of the Overworld such as colors which divides the world into four different tinted quadrants this is clearly a representation of the Microsoft logo after all they do own moyang a related effect is found in the chest Dimension where the Overworld has been transformed into an infinite chessboard another interesting one is wall which splits the entire Overworld into two halves a red half and a blue half a giant Bedrock wall separates the two there is a single iron door connecting them while the Overworld variations are nice the more interesting worlds are those with completely new generation one example is content here we find a dirt Sky Block with a tree there’s a chest containing a few items I’m not quite sure how far you could progress with this and I couldn’t find anyone who’d attempted a survival playthrough starting in this Dimension if you know how far you could get with an empty inventory let me know in the comments below speaking of comments the dimension named content is clearly a reference to how Minecraft is used for content on platforms such as YouTube for an example look no further than this very video but this is n the only YouTube reference the Perfection world is comprised of an infinite grid of 9×9 Cobblestone rooms this is a nod to the YouTuber Direwolf 20 who has an affinity for building structures in this shape he even has a reaction video about this there’s another category of World Generation those which create unique patterns one example is brand which has an infinite number of Creeper faces arranged in a checkerboard speaking of which checker board is similar but with diable blocks instead of creepers unfortunately it’s unstable and crashes often the pattern Dimensions while notable are nonetheless fairly predictable but certain other special worlds feel much more weird and alien take for example Gallery an infinite walkway is punctuated by helical structures extending vertically into the void the strands are made out of random blocks and their individual Heights vary the result is a pretty unique visual aesthetic it’s as if we’re seeing a glimpse of the artworks of some interdimensional being then there are the worlds that can only be described as Lial such as Bridges an intricate network of endstone platforms extends in each Direction they’re held up by skinny pillar impossibly tall with the ground supporting them far out of sight the sky is perpetually empty a dull purple contrasting with a similarly muted colors of the bridges their size elicits a touch of megalophobia instinctually we somehow know this place should not exist and yet it does infinite and lifeless trapped in an eternal state of in between there’s another dimension that we need to talk about one that produces similar feelings of limbo but this particular World feels a bit more Sinister in nature let us build a portal that leads to llama upon arrival we find ourselves in a small room to the right is the titler Llama living in a pin with a green carpet the rest of the room is bleached white save for a lone painting of a sky at dusk with a sunset to the left there’s a pair of signs telling us to relax and enjoy on the other side is a window looking out to a blue sky except it’s not actually a blue sky upon closer examination we’ll find that there’s nothing more than glowstone and concrete this window is Just an Illusion the facade it’s no more real than the painting if we keep breaking the blocks we’ll stumble across a chest hidden in the back opening it reveals a book by developer inside there is a single cryptic sentence nothing to solve as we dig around a chilling fact will become apparent this room is encased in Bedrock except for the portal there’s no way out the entire universe is a tiny manufactured space a hollow representation of relaxation but things become more unsettling when we switch into spectator mode for we find that this is not the only place in this Dimension at all instead there are thousands upon thousands of identical rooms buried deep within the Bedrock every instance has the same false Sky the same signs and yes the same llama these llamas will never interact with one another other and they will never Escape for them their entire universe is their one room they will never know that their others just a few blocks away a world like this begs for an explanation but then we think back to the book which reveals the most chilling fact of all there’s nothing to solve there is no meaning to this endless prison no reason for these llamas to be trapped forever it just is the Llama Dimension embodies a certain existential powerlessness the unsettling thought that maybe just maybe nothing matters at all however at least this world has a way out the same can’t be said for the isolation Dimension upon arrival we find a single constructed house upon a super flat world of dirt the architectural style is that of a villager with two stories in a garden there are two signs on the fence post one says go away and the second is a Swedish phrase that means no advertisements please but let’s just ignore the signs and enter the house anyways on the main floor there are three tamed wolves with red red green and blue collars their names are Bob’s dog Bob’s other dog and their cousin Jim turning left we can take the stairs to the basement here there are several boxes of infinite books but without a portal to use them there are also three empty trap chests although they’re not connected to any Redstone components ascending to the top we meet Bob a jobless jungle villager his room is simple but comfortable with a bed an empty juke box and a few decorations one of these is completely new it’s an item called a very fine item and it says home sweet home despite Bob’s deep isolation he seems happy with this place his life is peaceful but Bob has a secret literally buried beneath the surface digging down under Bob’s Garden we find a double chest inside there’s a suspicious arrangement of items bones rotten flesh and a sword named stabby mcab face Hostile Mobs do not spawn in the isolation world so there’s no reason Bob would ever need a sword what exactly is this chest why would Bob bury it so deep and we can’t help but Wonder was Bob always the only person in this Dimension or was he so desperate to find isolation that he did something unspeakable in tuming the evidence forever what was the dark cost of Bob’s permanent Solitude maybe we don’t want to spend too much time near Bob but before we leave I do want to mention that the configuration of items in the chest is the exact same every time regardless of the seed this makes me wonder if there’s some sort of code here perhaps rotten flesh is zero and bones are one or vice versa also the bookshelves in the basement spawn with the same colors in the same order red green and blue with yellow bookshelves notably absent are the red green and blue wolf collar supposed to draw our attention to the colors in the basement I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s even more to this world that we haven’t yet found s there is however a place that more obviously contains hidden meanings one of the shots from the moing YouTube video shows several in ships in an array this corresponds to the dimension appropriately named Fleet however these are not quite identical to regular in ships for starters the cabins do not have elytra the item frame is missing things get more interesting when we look in the chests instead of regular loot each container has a single book entitled orders the name of the author is obscured though we can see that it’s a seven-letter word followed by a four-letter word opening the book reveals regular text mixed with jumble text each book is different there are words such as discover reinforce destroy capture or find sometimes there’s an extra phrase at the end like mappings or modders or lost floppies thankfully we learned how to view this chaos text earlier in the video let’s open up the game files once again and load the player data into our NBT editor upon doing so we can see that the author’s name is deepest lore very interesting going further into the file the hidden text behind the gibberish is revealed observe cheese deploy cheese restore cheese cut cheese wait it’s all cheese no not quite the text in each book is created using a formula a verb followed by an object reinforce toe shoes deliver maies capture those pesky modders discover license-free mappings build Minecraft 3D the Lost floppies deploy content in fact there are 12 verbs and 14 objects leading to 168 total possible blocks despite the supposed deepest lore I was unable to find many meaningful connections it’s all random nonetheless there are some possible combinations with subtle hints find content could be a suggestion to warp to the content Dimension then there’s discover Footprints a reference to the footprint items found in the missing World another example is find a banana and it turns out there actually are bananas to find if we look in the 20 w14 infinite jar file there’s a folder titled nothing to see here move along exploring this we locate another folder this one named banana within are two audio files banan nana. OG and banana Nana nana. OG these are the hidden bananas and they have the sound effects that play during startup it’s yet another another Easter egg from the Golden Goose that is 20 w14 infinite the remaining dimensions are quickly discovered by the Minecraft commands Community some of these are funny such as the nothing Dimension warping there we find well nothing except there actually is something teleporting to a specific Place reveals a sign that says ha I lied this isn’t nothing the chunk coordinates spell out the first several digits of pi and all it took to find this was flying over 1.5 million blocks away from the origin speaking of the origin let’s warp there there are D glass blocks in three colors the meaning of this is obvious they clearly represent elements of the ukian vector space R3 which is a finite dimensional inner product space over the real numbers R3 can be described as a cartisian product of three copies of R notating the red green and blue glass rods as representations of vectors E1 E2 and E3 we can Define the bases b as the set of these vectors the projection operator P projects from R3 R the projector with El IED upon the Bas Vector of el J results in Delta th we have final Bas the proof of whichc the meter any all right all right all right okay um let’s warp somewhere else what about uh notes yeah that seems nice or maybe it’s not so nice Okay peace and quiet peace and quiet where can we find peace and quiet uh tunnels yeah tunnels um okay it feels a little claustrophobic let’s go to a different Zone wait why can’t I see ow there’s poison okay we need something simple a basic Dimension there we go basic ah very nice uh Eternal maze from which There Is No Escape all right all all right let’s try retro yes perfect retro now this is a place where I can finish up my vapor wave album hm I have the sudden urge to try new warps as fast as I can pillars ooh lots of pillars spiral yep that’s a spiral rooms yeah there’s some pretty big rooms there shapes those are shapes sky grid wao okay now this one is really cool I could spend some time here such a fascinating aesthetic look at the negative space patterns hey what about patterns very interesting it seems almost as though this could be some sort of binary code the squares are 8 by8 grids with two possible States in each cell and as we move in a direction the surface changes in a way that appears to be binary counting sometimes at least this really makes me wonder if it contains some sort of message hm message we apologize for the inconvenience all right what could be left ah yes the credits and sure enough this has the credits of Minecraft constructed out of grass blocks floating in the void and just like that we’ve explored our 42nd world now we’ve seen all of the custom Dimensions or have we if you recall Box’s message he said that there are actually 43 Dimensions 42 of which could be accessed using a single word this means that there is one more Dimension out there while the Minecraft commands Community was able to find the first 42 rather quickly the final world remains elusive the First Progress comes when a user named Steve discovers a world named myroot where warping there reveals a rather frustrating text ah ah you didn’t say the magic word yeah this is a 43rd Dimension but these words suggest that it’s still not quite right there must be some other more correct word that warps here bot confirms that myroot is a collision and in a turn of events conspicuously similar to a certain recent RGN video series the contents of the final Dimension are encrypted just like two mcon 7z it’s encoded using AES this is an encryption manner that is considered virtually unbreakable without the password but unlike two MineCon this password is pretty darn secure box says that the name is a whopping 66 characters long this is not going to be found through random chance although several users Tred to reason their way to a solution Bach makes it clear that such attempts will prove feudal This is highly amusing but I already told you you’re not supposed to crack it I wish I had time to design some puzzle into it but it’s just a phrase that’s not supposed to be in any dictionary that I will release when I have my l in another two Minecon parallel the developer statement doesn’t really slow down the community at all they continue to search for the key ultimately though no one is able to figure it out they would have no choice but to wait for more information it doesn’t take long the following day on April 2nd Bach provides a clue okay so I’ve decided to give you something to work with but I still don’t want it to be easy so I brushed my very old project the link connects to an audio stream which runs continuously let’s tune in for a bit and listen to air. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] OG out of all the odd things hidden in this update air. OG is the most concerting the audio is at times downright unsettling a recording of a music box followed by a child’s voice strangely conspicuous musical [Music] intervals sections of Morse [Music] code bizarre fluctuating pitches 3 4 5 6 7 8 90 extended sequences of seemingly random [Music] notes and throughout it all a consistent theme of numbers being spoken in different languages one right after another 090 1 4 it turns out that these tracks are recordings of number stations these are radio stations that transmit messages to covert operatives or spies if the Spy knows when to listen and how to decode the message they can do so basically risk-free the existence of number stations goes back to World War I although they were most commonly used during the Cold War in fact they still exist today their Simplicity remains useful even now you want the numbers Mason that’s all we’ve ever wanted the tones and music we hear are known as preludes they indicate when a message is about to be transmitted and if we listen to air. OG long enough we’ll hear a rather familiar Prelude this transmission must be intended for us let’s keep [Music] listening the audio is quite different from most of the number stations there is no spoken text only synthetic tones surely this is the information designed for us to solve unfortunately this code is one where you either know what it is or you don’t one Discord user named urot had the idea that turned out to be correct this might be an sstv transmission this stands for slow scan television and it’s a method of sending images over radio unlike regular TV sstv takes a long time to transmit a single image sometimes a minute or more it was often used by spacecraft such as the Soviet Luna 3 pictures in my heartbeats from space video so what about air. OG getting this to work takes a bit of finagling I did it on Windows using a program called RX sstv set to the robot 72 mode you’ll also need a virtual audio cable to provide the sound once it’s configured we can play the transmission and watch the image appear in real [Music] time what we see is a handwritten note it’s a little difficult to read but we can make it out once the transmission completes this is a very long phrase that hopefully is not in any dictionary at last we have it the key to the 43rd and final special Dimension let’s open up Minecraft then warp to it we find that the uhuhuh text has been replaced now there’s a much longer message suspended in the void hello only purpose of this message was to troll completionists and put my name somewhere in Minecraft again I hope it wasn’t cracked by accident it was obviously supposed to take more time than other phrases written during time of plague by Bach yes lowercase because symmetry all these worlds are yours except Europa use them together use them in peace Europa the Moon sold [Music] separately and this final message is the cherry on top of the truly amazing 20 w14 infinite update what started as a series of random New Dimensions has morphed into something far more interesting in this video we uncovered an Ever deepening wealth of hidden secrets and Mysteries it’s only fitting that it concludes with the signature of the Creator I think this video has covered most of the history codes and Easter eggs surrounding this version but there are a few things that I couldn’t fit in naturally the official announcement has a section about bugs nervously proclaiming that this version has no bugs and the author is nervous for a reason because instead they’ve actually added a new bug the ant block we can find another intriguing connection if we look at the three generated books found in this update there’s a book from the box of infinite books the book from llama and the book from the end ships combined we have nothing to solve deepest lore and universe itself How can there be both deep lore and nothing to solve perhaps this is some sort of subtle commentary on how you make your own story in Minecraft Universe could be a reference to the end poem’s narrators or maybe not but I did want to mention it regardless I also wanted to bring up that the creative inventory is shuffled in the exact same way every time I have to wonder if there’s a reason for this even with everything I’ve covered it would not Shock me if there’s still more to find in this snapshot try it yourself play it a little bit there’s truly nothing like it in the history of Minecraft thank you so much for watching I’ve wanted to do a deeper analysis on this update for a long time and I’m happy to finally have that opportunity what do you think let me know in the comments below if you enjoyed this video feel free to subscribe subscribe and if you want to support me further join as a deep diver Channel member we’d love to have you we will go ahead and end with that I will see you all in the next video have a great day [Music]

The 20w14infinite update is most known for its random worlds, but there is far more to it than meets the eye. Tonight, we’ll take a deep dive into this update and discover its many hidden secrets and codes.

Link to the RGN Discord: https://discord.gg/retrogamingnow

Music by RetroGamingNow:
“Lilypad” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H00FZTPxlac
“Universe Itself”
“The Depths” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYLE1YghV1E
“Dark Wanderer”
“The Watcher” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgqi0diIx30
“Library of Babel”
“Gemini” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O9gkVTXxz8
“Ethereal Screenscape – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3bejtiESOw”
“Unknown Enigma” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7vshK288xY
“Gaze”

#minecraft #mystery #secret #mojang #codes