One of the site taglines of lemmy-based link aggregator “hexbear.net” is “Running on Java Minecraft v0.9.” This tagline caught my attention more than the endless number of other annoying taglines, because it doesn’t make any sense.

It might seem absurd that a website could run on Minecraft at all. However, several popular mods such Dynmap,1 BlueMap,2 and JourneyMap3 can spin up http servers to show live maps of a Minecraft world. The most obvious problem, then, is the version number.

No version of Minecraft, Java-based or otherwise, has a version “v0.9.” The “old” version of the Minecraft launcher has a version 0.9, and it is written in java.4 However, it is a launcher, it is not Minecraft! While it is theoretically possible a web server could have been integrated into the launcher, it does not have one.

Minecraft: Pocket Edition has a version "v0.9.0 alpha,"5 but this also has obvious problems. It does not follow the same versioning scheme as the tagline, nor could this version run a website. So, we must return to the father of them all, the original java-based Minecraft.

Starting with Minecraft Alpha all versions start at 1.0. Digging through the pre-alpha versions, the only similar version is Classic 0.0.9a. Again, the versioning scheme differs. This was also a “private test build” that is currently lost. It would be a disgrace if the admins of hexbear.net were hoarding this important piece of the game’s history. At the end of the “multiplayer test” phase of Classic, a change of the versioning scheme was planned that would match that of the tagline.6 This started with 0.24_SURVIVAL_TEST,7 missing the tagline by a whopping 15 versions. Not even close.

So, we have seen that the version number doesn’t make sense. However, the edition of Minecraft doesn’t make sense either! When there was only one edition, the java-based version of Minecraft was known simply as Minecraft (although there were other working titles, such as cave game and Minecraft: Order of the Stone8). With the debut of Pocket Edition, which would become Bedrock Edition, the original was often referred to as Minecraft Java (not “Java Minecraft”). As more editions were added and unified as Bedrock, the original game was official dubbed Minecraft: Java Edition (sometimes Minecraft (Java Edition)) with version 1.12.2.9

The tagline is an outright lie. Wrong version, wrong edition. All we have left is “Running on,” which is incidentally what this post is doing. Please, do your own research before believing any tagline on “hexbear.net.”

  1. https://modrinth.com/plugin/dynmap
  2. https://modrinth.com/plugin/bluemap
  3. https://modrinth.com/mod/journeymap
  4. https://minecraft.wiki/w/Launcher_version_history
  5. https://minecraft.wiki/w/Pocket_Edition_v0.9.0_alpha
  6. https://minecraft.wiki/w/Java_Edition_Classic_0.0.23a_01
  7. https://minecraft.wiki/w/Java_Edition_Classic_0.24_SURVIVAL_TEST
  8. https://minecraft.wiki/w/Java_Edition_pre-Classic
  9. https://minecraft.wiki/w/Java_Edition_version_history