On September 18th, 2010, Notch released the final "Seecret" update - weekly updates where the features had to be figured out by the community themselves - before dedicating his attention to the forthcoming Halloween update and releasing Alpha 1.2, changing the face of Minecraft forever.

Before the Halloween update, Minecraft was biomeless, with all foliage being an almost radioactive lime green. There was no nether, making fast-travel limited to boats and elaborate minecart systems propelled by boosters. Redstone contraptions were limited in their practicality; while certain users had made amazing things with redstone in-game, it was limited in functionality to opening doors, turning lights on and off, and crafting compasses. The terrain was insane - gentle rolling hills would jump up to towering mountains with insane, protruding overhangs that would produce safe havens for hostile mobs, or the player once they were suitable illuminated. Wide oceans, expansive but not obnoxious, separated the enormous landmasses, and gentle sloping beaches of sand and gravel would line the shores.

There were other changes made in the Halloween update - SMP became playable in survival for the first time. Before this, damage was non-functional and hostile mobs were disabled by default. It was impossible to die or kill mobs, restricting most servers at the time to building with either a limited pool of blocks or infinite cheated-in items that could not be naturally obtained due to the bugginess of the server.

This is where the Not So Seecret Saturday mod, or NSSS, steps in. I've been playing Alpha 1.1.2_01 as my main singleplayer version for nearly two years now. I have gotten fully accustomed to the aforementioned features of the game at that time, but there is something to be said about playing a game that still receives constant updates. Could I play modern minecraft instead? Yes, I could, and I do, but Alpha has such a different feel that I am constantly drawn back to it, even though I wish it weren't stagnant. So, one day, when I found out that MCP had a version old enough to support 1.1.2_01, I knew exactly what to do.

But not how to do it! I knew java fairly well but the decompiled code that MCP gave me was still largely an obfuscated mess. So, I got my friend andreja6, who had previously made "minecraft classic revived" to achieve a similar goal with classic, and the assistance of Artsicle, to make my vision.

Well, "my" vision turned to "our" vision pretty fast, and it's safe to say that their influence also shaped this mod for the better.

Installation Instructions

Client

•unzip a1.1.3.zip into %appdata%/.minecraft/versions, so you have a folder named "a1.1.3" with the json and the
"put_in_jar" folder inside it.
•Using the minecraft launcher, download a VANILLA alpha 1.1.2_01, load the client, then close it and the launcher
completely.
•Copy the "a1.1.2_01.jar" from the a1.1.2_01 directory in .minecraft/versions and paste it into /a1.1.3
rename the jar to "a1.1.3.jar", without quotation marks.
•Open the jar with your archive program of choice (winzip, 7zip, winrar), delete META_INF, and drop the contents
of "put_in_jar" into the jar.
•If you've done everything correctly, then close everything, open the launcher, find "old_alpha a1.1.3" in the
version list, and play!

Server

Just run the jar as you would an exe. Can only be connected to by another client running Alpha 1.1.3!