About the project
This project started when I noticed how hacky and inconsistent Alpha servers got once
Mojang stopped supporting older versions.
I got the idea for this while playing a now-defunct Alpha server called Nostalgia Craft,
but it took another few years before I actually had the chance to make this a reality.
You can read the full credits here, or read about support and frequently asked questions here.
Origins
I started this project after playing numerous Alpha servers and wanting to start my own.
It initially was just to fill the void that Nostalgia Craft left, and was just another
server for Minecraft Alpha v1.2.6. After a while, I thought "Hey, why don't I also host
skins and resources so people can easily have a consistent experience?", or something like that,
I dunno. It initially was done manually, and once I got hosting done on my own machine with a
PHP backend, you could upload your own had literally no password protection or anything, just
a page where you could just type in your username and upload a skin. This obviously was absolute
jank, so I soon got to work in getting a database set up to store user accounts to actually secure
the process of setting accounts. Then I realized that I should probably secure this with SSL,
so after looking for a way to get a certificate for the low, low price of free,
I got SSL working. Another realisation then happened. What if I were to just replicate the entirety
of Mojang's now non-existant backend for this game, now that I have accounts set up? But I just went
"Nah, I'll do it later," like with a lot of the other things I've done here. The thing that drove me
to actually implement this, along with the email verification, was multiple instances of people abusing
MinecraftSP, offline mode and VPNs to evade bans, including one where someone was constantly
creating new accounts just to harrass me and my friends, so I finally decided that I've had enough and
spent the next day or so getting a verification system to work.
This lead to the project being what it is today, and not just yet another Alpha server.
Development and philosophy
I initially just started with a little test server pulled together with MinecraftSP and a
copy of the server jar I found probably on archive.org, and I soon realised that
using a proxy to point to a freewha server I had just wasn't cutting it,
so I quickly began working on an actual mod to the game that made it automatically
point to that server, before getting my own server up and running some time after I realised
that I had a server and domain already running, albeit for a different purpose, that I can use.
So I got to work on modding the client, and then the server and oooold launcher once I got the
auth stuff implemented. I'm basically just aiming to make old Minecraft versions as playable
as they used to be all these years ago.
The future
I plan on making other versions (as technically all versions up until Beta 1.8.1,
and possibly beyond can probably work) available to play through here. Once I'll get
something relatively free (in terms of available CPU and the power of that CPU)
to host this on, and make sure this is reliable, I'll probably start recommending
this to other server owners.