Avalon III - July Update

02 Jul 2022 - MarcatoSound

It’s been one heck of a year for Avalon since we announced development had resumed on Avalon III. Since then, we’ve revealed only a few glimpses at our plans, along with a brief look at Liffentein, our first zone. However, we’ve been keeping our cards very close to our chests so far. There’s been a lot of work and a lot of discussion about how we’re going to pull off our ambitious plans for Avalon III, and we are becoming increasingly comfortable with revealing the work we’ve done! Let’s take a look…

Zone updates

First up, we’ve got some news to share of the zone worlds! One of these zones - the coastal highlands of Altaath - had all of its biomes finished early in June, and planning is under way for the mountain and tundra region of Eladania.

Furthermore… the magic forest region of Faria - which we showed pictures of in March - is in the process of being generated right now! At the time of writing this announcement, it’s at about 60% complete. We’re hoping to show it off more once it’s completed.

For now though… here are some pictures taken from our tests of the Altaath biomes! Altaath 1 Altaath 2 Altaath 3

Artwork

Here’s a fun one… we haven’t discussed or shared artwork much before with Avalon development, but we’ve got some exciting news and previews this time around.

First of all, Featherstorm208 has been promoted to the position of Arts Team Lead! She’s now responsible for managing the artists we have. This means coordinating with them, reviewing and approving their work, and of course doing some artwork herself. In fact…

Feather just finished the concept art for one of our new bosses coming in Avalon III… allow me to introduce you all to the False Phoenix. False Phoenix, art by Featherstorm208

We’ve also got some materials to show off! Take a look…

Materials be lego

Dragon quartz Moonpearl Phoenix steel Starfire
Dragon Quartz Moonpearl Phoenix Steel Starfire

Weapon templates by Wandering Ace

Currently, these are just template textures, hence the NEON COLOURS. But in the future, we will be using these templates to create variants for different weapons. In this case, we’re showing one from each of the new weapon types! Some of these look kinda big… 👀

Template Rapier Template claymore Template spear Template battle axe
Template Rapier Template Claymore Template Spear Template Battle Axe

Look forward to lots more updates from the art team in the near future as we enter a new and VERY exciting phase for the arts department… stay tuned.

Dungeons

This last week, we finished building one of our new dungeons… and another dungeon is already well under way! Check out the pictures here!

The Boilery

The Boilery

Adabrava (development screenshot)

Adabrava

Closing remarks

Thank you all for being so patient with us. It’ll likely be some time before we release another update of this caliber, as we’ve built up a lot to show since March when we revealed Avalon’s return.

Going forward, we will be making an effort to semi-frequently post information in the brand new Updates channel. This could range from little messages, to screenshots of development content, to just fun peeks into our team goofing off.

What happened to RemSMP?

Oh I guess it’s finally time to talk about this, huh…? Long story short, Matt and I made the difficult decision to cancel it entirely not too long after it was put on hiatus. Between he and I having so much to do, and the stress of producing it and our struggle to find partners to bring on board, we decided the healthy choice was to put it to rest.

There are, however, plans to recycle some of the content and story ideas in some other mediums that are already underway… so the highlights I had planned for RemSMP will still see the light, but not in the form of a gameplay series.

Regarding Technoblade

For those who aren’t aware, Minecraft YouTuber Technoblade recently lost his battle with cancer. I’d like to take just a moment to say that Technoblade was by far the most influential Minecraft YouTuber to me for a multitude of reasons. Matt and I both are extremely heavily inspired by him for his sense of humor, his creativity, and the way he presented himself. He was the only Minecraft YouTuber I actively followed and dropped everything for when there was a new video.

As selfish as this may sound, I had hoped that, some day, if Avalon did well enough, he might play on it when it was released. I’m beyond heartbroken that he’ll never get to see the fruits of the positive impact he had upon me and Matt. He will be dearly missed, and I can’t express enough how devastating the news was to me the night-of. My prayers go out to his family, his friends, and the Minecraft community affected by his passing.

This has quite directly reminded me that I need to double down on making these projects happen while I still can. Technoblade achieved his lifelong dream of 10 million subscribers mere months before his death. The time we have is so incredibly precious, and I don’t want to waste a moment of it. Thank you all for spending it here in the Avalon community with me. I will continue to work hard to ensure you all can set foot in this beautiful world me and the team are pouring our blood, sweat and tears into.

Thank you.

Matthew “Marc” Grice