The Game That Never Ends

The Game That Never Ends

A Fabric mod for Minecraft 26.1.2.

This mod recreates the versions as authentically as possible (textures, sounds, terrain generation, mobs, trades, mechanics).

Please report bugs in the github repo. Thank you.

• This mod is for survival playthroughs.

The world advances through every era of Minecraft in order, from rd-132211 to 26.1.2. Terrain, blocks, items, mobs, structures, textures, sounds and music are all rebuilt to match whichever era is currently running. Once the timeline reaches 26.1.2 it stops there and the world stays modern.

Every chunk is permanently stamped with the era it was born in, and that stamp never changes. A world therefore becomes a geological record of its own history: Classic hills beside Infdev plains beside modern biomes, each still looking and behaving like the version that made it. Farlands exist.

Requirements

• Minecraft: 26.1.2
• Mod loader: Fabric Loader 0.19.3 or newer, plus Fabric API
• Java: 25
• Disk space: ~1 GB typical, up to ~4 GB (see details below)
• Internet: Required on first launch, and while audio is still being fetched
• Multiplayer: Untested (see details below)
• Conflicts: Not compatible with Sodium or terrain generation mods (see details below)

Disk space, in detail

Everything the mod caches lives under .minecraft/tgtne-cache/. Measured from a full run through the timeline:

versions/  | ~800 MB       | 61 files    | Original client jar of every era
extracted/ | ~160 MB       | ~211,000    | Textures unpacked and renamed per era
sprites/   | ~10 MB        | ~8,900      | De-duplicated sprite pool shared by all eras
sounds/    | grows to 3 GB | varies      | Era audio, fetched on demand

Measured on a real install after a full pass through the timeline: 970 MB, of which the jars are 800 MB and the era audio 150 MB.

Almost all of that is fixed - the jars, the extracted textures and the sprite pool do not grow once setup is done. Only sounds/ keeps growing as you visit more eras, and it enforces a 3 GB ceiling, evicting the least recently played files past it. So the realistic range is 1 GB after setup, and 4 GB only if you play long enough to cache the audio of every era at once.

2 GB free is enough to start. 5 GB if you want it all cached and never evicted.

Two things worth knowing:

• The file count matters more than the size. Over 200,000 small files land in extracted/. On Windows this is the slowest part of setup and it is worth excluding tgtne-cache from real-time antivirus scanning.
• The cache is disposable. Delete tgtne-cache/ at any time. It costs you the setup time again and nothing else - no world data is stored there.

First launch takes a while

On first run the mod downloads and extracts the textures for every version in the timeline. This is one-time work and can take several minutes.

It begins as soon as the game launches, not when you join a world, so it runs while you are still on the title screen. Each version is extracted exactly once and cached; later launches skip the step entirely.

Watch logs/latest.log for Sprite pool primed. Once that line appears everything is ready and switching eras is near-instant.

Multiplayer

Untested. The mod is built with a server and client split - the era clock, world generation and content gating run server-side, and the client is told the current era over its own packets - so a dedicated server should work with the mod installed on both the server and every client. It has only ever been run in singleplayer, so treat multiplayer as unverified rather than supported.

A client without the mod cannot join a server with it, and the reverse is also true.

Compatibility

Sodium is not supported. Legacy block textures are applied by hooking the terrain renderer that Fabric's rendering API installs. Sodium replaces that renderer wholesale, so the hook never runs and blocks in old chunks keep their modern textures while everything else changes around them. Iris, which builds on Sodium, has the same problem.

Terrain generation mods are not supported. Each era supplies its own chunk generator, so the mod takes over ChunkGenerator, NoiseBasedChunkGenerator and the biome source. Any mod that also modifies world generation - biome packs, structure generators, generation overhauls - will either be ignored or will conflict outright. Mods that only add blocks, items or mobs are usually fine, though nothing gates them by era, so they will appear in every era including Classic.

How it works

An era lasts a configurable number of in-game days (20 by default). When it ends the world advances to the next version in the timeline. 26.1.2 is the last entry, so the progression finishes there rather than looping.

An era change affects:

• Terrain: Newly generated chunks use that version's own generator, ported from its jar. Classic's finite island, Infdev's endless noise, the Alpha/Beta climate system, the 1.7 biome generator, and modern noise generation are all separate implementations.
• Content: Blocks, items, recipes, mobs, ores and structures appear only from the version that introduced them.
• Appearance: Textures, models and colours come from that version's own client jar.
• Audio: Sound effects and music are that version's recordings.
• Mechanics: Hunger, sprinting, the attack cooldown, sword blocking, the off-hand, fall damage, world height and the day/night cycle all follow the era.

What changes per era

Everything below is taken from that version's own client jar rather than written by hand.

World generation

Era range	Generator
rd-132211 - c0.30_01c	Classic's finite island, with its own sea and bedrock rules
inf-20100618	Infdev's endless noise
a1.0.4 - b1.7.3	The Alpha/Beta climate and noise system
b1.8.1 - 1.6.4	Beta 1.8 terrain with biome shaping
1.7.10 onward	The 1.7 biome generator, then modern noise generation

Also per era: world height and depth, sea level, cave and ore placement, decoration passes, stronghold depth, the Nether, End generation and the dragon fight. Before 1.9.4 the dragon is locked to its old behaviour - circling and charging, with no perching, breath attack or fireballs.

Blocks, items and drops

• Blocks and items exist only from the version that introduced them.
• Every chunk carries the era it was born in; every placed block can carry its own.
• Block drops keep the era of the block that was broken, not the era you are standing in.
• Loot tables, chest loot and mob drops are the era's own.
• Recipes are gated per era, including recipes the modern game has since removed.
• Enchantments, enchanting table behaviour and the lapis slot follow the era.

Mobs

• Spawn rosters per era, with anything too new removed on a regular sweep.
• Mob equipment, baby variants and models per era - horses, rabbits, sheep wool, piglins, skeleton gear, slime spawning rules.
• Zombies only break doors from 1.2.5 onward, and only on Hard.

Villages and villagers

Villages are generated from a port of 1.12.2's own layout code and exist from Beta 1.8.1 to 1.13.2. From 1.14.4 the game's jigsaw villages take over.

Modern Minecraft decides what a village is by looking for beds, job sites and bells. An old village has none of those, so all of the behaviour that depends on them had to be rebuilt on the census those versions actually used - counting doors.

Behaviour	Rule
Iron golems	5+ villagers and 3+ doors nearby, one golem per 10 villagers
Breeding	Population under 35% of the door count, two adults close together
Zombie sieges	From 1.4.7, after dark, once per night, 20 zombies at the village edge

Villager AI is the 1.12.2 goal list with its original constants: swim, flee zombies at 8 blocks (and evokers, vindicators and vexes once those exist), trade, head indoors at night or in rain, open and close doors behind them, stay near home, watch the player, wander.

Professions are rolled per villager, because "unemployed" is a 1.14 idea, and a villager keeps its profession for life.

Trades

Trades are per era for all 29 trading eras, extracted from each version's client jar.

Era range	Source
1.3.2 - 1.7.10	Profession pool with per-trade chance rolls
1.8.9 - 1.13.2	The career trade array
1.14.4 - 1.21.11	The modern listing system
26.1.x	Vanilla, untouched

A villager trades its birth era's wares for life, so one you met in 1.3.2 is still selling 1.3.2 goods long after the world has moved on.

Rendering

• Textures, models and colours from the era's jar.
• Per-position geometry for chests and beds, so an old chest stays flat in a modern world.
• Legacy boat, sign, minecart and bed renderers.
• Biome tinting switched off in the eras that baked colour into the texture.
• Procedural water and lava, which only ran from Classic 0.30 to 1.4.7.
• Per-era particles, ambient occlusion, lightmap and fog.
• Legacy menu windows - inventory, enchanting table, furnace, trading - including the pre-1.9 crafting grid layout and the hidden off-hand slot.
• Lighting is according to the era.

Era borders

Because the stamp is per chunk, two neighbouring chunks can belong to versions years apart. The border between them is where the interesting cases live.

Features can reach across a border. A tree generated in an Infdev chunk is wider than the trunk it grew from, so its canopy can land in a neighbouring chunk whose era had no trees at all. Those writes are refused: a tree will not build into a chunk whose birth era predates trees, so the canopy is clipped at the border rather than appearing in a version that never had one. The same holds for any decoration that overhangs.

Tinting is per chunk, not per world. Biome colouring arrives partway through the timeline - grass and leaf colour at Alpha 1.2.0, water colour at Beta 1.7.3. Before those points the colour was baked into the texture itself, so the biome tint is deliberately switched off in older chunks. That is why a Classic chunk's grass stays one colour across biomes while the chunk beside it does not.

Warning - leaves at a border. Switching the tint off is only correct when the era supplies its own pre-coloured leaf texture. The oldest eras (rd-132211, c0.0.11a, c0.0.13a) have no leaves at all, so there is nothing to fall back on and an untinted leaf renders white. Foliage tinting is therefore left on in chunks whose era predates leaves, even though grass tinting stays off. White leaves mean a leaf block has reached a chunk older than leaves themselves.

What to expect at a border, none of which is a bug:

• A hard vertical cliff where two terrain generators meet - they are unrelated and make no attempt to blend
• Grass, foliage or water changing colour abruptly across a single chunk line
• Water animating on one side and static on the other, since the procedural water effect only ran from Classic 0.30 to 1.4.7
• Mobs, ores and structures stopping dead at the line, each being gated on the era of the chunk it would spawn in

Audio

Sound and music are era-accurate, but only as far as Mojang's own distribution allows.

Every version from rd-132211 to 1.5.2 shares a single asset index, and 1.6.4 shares another, so those 24 eras have three distinct sets of sound effects between them rather than 24. Per-version audio genuinely begins at 1.7.10.

• rd-132211, c0.0.11a and c0.0.13a ship no sound engine at all and are completely silent
• Classic 0.30 has 16 sound files, all footsteps. Breaking a block plays a footstep, and mobs make no noise
• Block-breaking sounds of their own first appear in 1.4.7
• Music arrives in Classic 0.0.22a, is switched off again through Indev and Infdev, and returns in Alpha 1.0.14 - so inf-20100618 and a1.0.4 are silent by design
• Nether, End, Creative and menu music all arrive together in 1.7.10; older eras have none

A track is never played in an era that predates it. The overworld music event offers every track in the game at once, so the choice is re-rolled against a per-track table built from Mojang's asset indexes.

Audio is fetched on demand rather than up front, so the first minutes in a new era may still use modern sounds while its recordings download. Once a file is on disk it is used immediately and cached for good.

Commands and config

• /tgtnelocate village — Finds the nearest legacy village, using the generator's own acceptance test.

The B key skips forward five in-game days, with a five second cooldown, for testing era transitions without waiting.

config/the-game-that-never-ends.json:

Option	Default	Meaning
eraCycleDays	20	In-game days per era
downloadTextures	true	Fetch era client jars for assets
showEraHud	true	Current era on the HUD
allowAllPlayersToSkip	true	Who may use the skip key
skipDaysCooldownSeconds	0	Cooldown on the skip key
debugMode	false	Extra logging

Known limits

• Chunks keep their birth era's look, not their birth era's blocks. A block placed by the player is not re-skinned to match the chunk around it.
• Double chests before 1.15.2 use modern art. The old sheet is a single 30-wide box and the modern one is two halves; the two are not convertible.
• Villages exist from Beta 1.8.1 to 1.13.2 only. From 1.14.4 onward the game's own jigsaw villages take over.
• Nothing is craftable before inf-20100618. No jar that old ships a recipe registry, so crafting is refused outright rather than guessed at.
• A few modern trades are approximations. Suspicious stew and treasure maps need information the era tables do not carry, so they sell a plain stew and an ordinary map at the right price. Everything else is exact.
• Villagers do not sleep. Beds only became a village fixture in 1.14, and the eras with old-style villagers never had that behaviour.
• April Fools snapshots are not included. The timeline is real releases only.

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Read the README for more information.

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Mod ID the-game-that-never-ends — by Zellior — ModJam 2026