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Zombie helmet

A zombie wearing a helmet in the Survival Test.

Skeleton helmet

A skeleton wearing a helmet in the Survival Test.

Survival Test was a test for the survival game mode, initially released to premium members[1] during the Classic phase of development, and was accessible at minecraft.net/survivaltest, and refers to nine versions released between September 1 and October 24, 2009.

On October 24, 2009,[citation needed] Survival Test was opened to be played regardless of premium membership.

Survival Test was removed from the website on December 16, 2010, when the site received a major overhaul, during the Alpha phase. Survival Test is not available in the launcher, though it can be played if the user is able to provide the .jar file.

Additions[]

Mobs
  • Added zombies, skeletons, creepers, pigs, and spiders.
  • Creepers in this version had a melee attack where they jumped into the player and would only explode upon death.
  • Skeleton's arrows were purple, and when killed blew up in an explosion of six to eight arrows that the player could pick up, increasing the total amount of arrows the player has. They also shot arrows from their bare hands as bows did not exist in the Survival Test. Skeletons shot their arrows at a much faster rate than in current versions, making them one of, if not the most dangerous mob in the Survival Test.
Health
  • The player has a health bar, which has 10 hearts (♥ × 10). When the player has 2 hearts or lower on the health bar, the health bar begins to shake.
  • Players and mobs can take damage from various sources: falling, drowning, lava, hostile mobs, and the player's arrows.
  • Brown mushrooms can be eaten by right-clicking while holding it, healing 2.5 hearts. They are dropped by pigs and sheep. Red mushrooms are poisonous, and damage the player by 1.5 hearts.
  • When the player dies, the world is no longer playable, like in Hardcore mode before spectator mode was introduced.
General
  • The player can fire arrows by pressing "tab". However, the player only spawns with 20 arrows upon generating a new world.
  • After 0.26 SURVIVAL TEST, the player starts with 10 TNT in their ninth hotbar slot, which can be placed with right-click and detonated with left-click. Exploding TNT deals a maximum of six hearts of damage (depending on how close the player is to it), and has a blast radius of about four blocks.

Points[]

Some aspects of the point system are listed below:

  • Pigs awarded 10 points.
  • Sheep awarded 10 points.
  • Zombies awarded 80 points. (formerly 100)
  • Spiders awarded 105 points.
  • Skeletons awarded 120 points. (formerly 100)
  • Creepers awarded 200 points (formerly 250).

Points would not be awarded for indirect kills (e.g. a creeper's explosion killing a zombie didn't award points for killing the zombie).

Blocks[]

A handful of blocks are obtained in different ways than in the modern game:

All blocks in the Survival Test could stack up to 99.


All other blocks found naturally in the world could be picked up normally, with the exception of ores and logs, which drop their resources, stone which drops cobblestone as normal, leaves which also drop saplings as normal, grass blocks which drop dirt (which can handle grass again) and liquids and bedrock which are unbreakable.

Trivia[]

  • Survival Test was going to be the original "beta" phase of the game, with "release" being when survival was finalized.[2] This was changed by Indev as Notch realized the game would have a much longer development cycle.
  • In Survival Test, zombies and skeletons had a chance of wearing decorative armor, but Notch removed it in Indev. This feature was re-added in a similar fashion in Java Edition 1.4.2.
  • In Survival Test, the fastest mob was the spider, being able to move as fast as the player.
  • In 0.24, creepers were made from the failed pig model.
  • In Survival Test, the player's hand is pointed backwards and is rotated slightly. This was changed in Indev and remains the same.
  • Stone materials are not damaged by TNT.
  • In this version, creepers had melee attacks and only exploded when killed, the only food source was mushrooms, and you could get them by killing pigs and sheep or finding them in caves. The red mushrooms were toxic and hurt the player for 3♥♥. The point system was first implemented in this update. The player's fist also took 4♥♥ away from the mob the player punched.
  • All mobs had 10 hearts of health.
  • The armor that skeletons and zombies had a chance of wearing, was referred to as "Plate Armor" and was the first type of armor to be added to the game. It was only used for testing purposes. The armor did not provide any protection to the zombie or skeleton wearing it.
  • If the player pressed the "F5" key on their keyboard, this would toggle a rainy weather effect.

Gallery[]

References[]

  1. https://web.archive.org/web/20090904213840/http://www.minecraft.net/survivaltest
  2. IRC logs on Archive.org; #minecraft.20090711.log. July 11, 2009 (UTC−5). "A9:27:00 <08Notch> beta = when survival mode works "ok"", "A9:27:06 <08Notch> release = when survival mode is done" (14:27 UTC)
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