Minecraft@Home (sometimes referred to as MinecraftAtHome due to technical reasons)[citation needed] is a Minecraft community project that searches for map seeds.[a] They are best known for their involvement in finding the world seed used for the Minecraft title screen panorama[1] and the original Herobrine image.[2]

Minecraft@Home
Type of projectMinecraft seed finding
CountryUnited States
Launched2019–2020
StatusActive

Projects

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Pack.PNG

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Pack.PNG is a cropped PNG image found in the files of Minecraft. The image was first introduced and implemented in Alpha 1.2.2a when texture packs were first introduced,[3] and served as the default texture pack icon until Release 1.13.2.[4][5] It is currently used as the default Minecraft server icon,[4][6] albeit in a greyscale variant.[5] The search started on 14 January 2020, when Youtuber SalC1 uploaded a video named The Mystery of the Minecraft pack.png file.[7] After the video was published, SalC1 contacted the developers Minecraft, Mojang Studios, on Twitter for information on the image file. Markus Persson, the creator of Minecraft, responded, being unable to answer the question.[citation needed]

Since the original image was low-quality, AI upscaling by using thousands of Minecraft screenshots was used, resulting in a higher quality 512x512 image. From then, a recreation of the image was constructed in order to compare with candidates for the original location. Minecraft@Home found the Z coordinate by using the pattern of the clouds.[8][9][non-primary source needed] Water orientation was used to find the direction the image was taken.[citation needed]

A program called 'BOINC' was used to let contributors contribute their processing power to narrow down seeds.[9][non-primary source needed] This was used to bring the potential seeds down to 700,000. The candidate seeds were then filtered through another program to check if they matched the height of the terrain in the previously constructed recreation.[8]

On September 5, 2020, after an 8-month search, the seed was found to be 3257840388504953787.[8] It was reportedly in the last 5% of seeds searched.[5]

Minecraft Title Screen Seed

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From versions Beta 1.8 to Release 1.13.2 of Minecraft, a panorama of an unknown world seed was used as the background of the title screen.[10][11][12] The panorama shows terrain of Minecraft filled with trees, a cliff and water. User Tomlacko started a search for this world seed after the pack.png project. Tomlacko managed to find the exact coordinates and game version by looking at the metadata of the images and the generation of the tall grass.[12][unreliable source?][failed verification][b] The version was found to be Beta 1.7.3. The version's biome blending algorithm, used for the coloring of grass and water, was used to further narrow down potential world seeds.[citation needed] The search ended on July 18, 2020, at approximately 5:45AM UTC,[12][non-primary source needed] revealing the image to have two matching seeds: 2151901553968352745 and 8091867987493326313.[10]

Herobrine World Seed

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The Herobrine World Seed project was started by andrew_555 (also known as Kminster), to find the origin of the image used in the original urban legend.[13] andrew_555 reportedly took 50 hours to write the code to find the seed and took months of debugging to fix.[2][13] The seed was found on January 16, 2021, revealed to be 478868574082066804.[14]

Notes

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  1. ^ In Minecraft, players are able to generate a preset world by inputting a 'seed' during world creation.
  2. ^ In Minecraft, the tall grass decoration generated in worlds is set to a random offset, but has the same pattern in each world.

References

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  1. ^ Bolding, Jonathan (July 19, 2020). "Minecraft players may have found the world of the title screen". PC Gamer. Future plc. Retrieved September 13, 2024.
  2. ^ a b Gravelle, Cody (January 24, 2021). "Minecraft Herobrine World Seed Discovered After 10 Years". Screen Rant. Valnet. Retrieved September 12, 2024.
  3. ^ Sayles, Lauren (September 8, 2020). "Minecraft fans have discovered the iconic pack.png seed". PC Invasion. Gamurs. Retrieved August 16, 2024.
  4. ^ a b Yin-Poole, Wesley (September 5, 2020). "Seed for "most iconic image in Minecraft history" found after eight month search". Eurogamer. Gamer Network. Retrieved August 15, 2024.
  5. ^ a b c Savic, Nikola (September 5, 2020). "Seed for Minecraft's famous pack.png world has finally been discovered". Ginx TV. ITV plc. Retrieved August 16, 2024.
  6. ^ Dziwinska, Aleksandra (September 7, 2020). "Minecraft - Secret of the Picture Solved After Months of Searching". Gamepressure. Gry-Online S.A. Retrieved August 15, 2024.
  7. ^ Trahan, Philip (September 5, 2020). "Minecraft Fans Find Sought-After Map Seed". Game Rant. Valnet. Retrieved August 15, 2024.
  8. ^ a b c Beckhelling, Imogen (September 7, 2020). "Minecraft fans have discovered the location of the "most iconic image in Minecraft history"". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Gamer Network. Retrieved August 16, 2024.
  9. ^ a b "Pack.png seed reversal methodology". Google Docs. Retrieved August 16, 2024.
  10. ^ a b Shepherd, Harry (July 20, 2020). "What is the Minecraft title screen seed?". PC Gamer. Future plc. Retrieved September 13, 2024.
  11. ^ "Minecraft fans find seed for famous title-screen background panorama". Eurogamer. Gamer Network. July 19, 2020. Retrieved September 13, 2024.
  12. ^ a b c Tomlacko (July 18, 2020). "BIG NEWS! We have found the SEED of Minecraft's title-screen background PANORAMA!". r/Minecraft. Retrieved September 13, 2024.
  13. ^ a b "Minecraft's Herobrine world seed has been discovered". Eurogamer. Gamer Network. January 24, 2021. Retrieved September 12, 2024.
  14. ^ Chalk, Andy (January 22, 2021). "Minecraft's infamous 'Herobrine' world seed has been found". PC Gamer. Future plc. Retrieved September 12, 2024.