Dino D-Day the Animated Series!

At long last, we’re incredibly excited to announce that we’ve partnered with Icehouse, the primetime animation label for Dublin-based Brown Bag Films, to develop Dino D-Day as an animated series! Also, Tommy Blacha, the creator of Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse and all-around genius comedy writer is on board to Executive Produce. We’re thrilled that Icehouse and Tommy have discovered the undeniable coolness of dinosaurs in World War II and are eager to bring it to the world.

The animated series will be produced with the aid of the Source Filmmaker which you may have heard about. It’s the tool Valve uses to create all of their cinematics as well as the “Meet the…” shorts for Team Fortress 2. It’s an incredible piece of technology that we at 800 North have had the privilege of working with for quite a while now. Icehouse has also worked with the tool and we’re eager to put our knowledge together to make something really cool. Back in 2008, it was our introduction to the Source Filmmaker (then a top secret project at Valve) that got us into the world of video game development in the first place! At long last, we’re ready to make something with it.

While we are creating the animated series, we’ll also be creating an entirely NEW version of Dino D-Day! We’re very excited to tackle this challenge now that we’re a little more “seasoned” developers. When we started working on Dino D-Day almost five years ago we were totally new to the world of game development (almost all of us came from television). Making the mod and then the commercial title was an incredible challenge for us and we certainly made our share of mistakes along the way. Now though, we’ve been “blooded” in the rough-and-tumble world of indie game development and we’re ready to make the epic Dino D-Day title you all wanted to play when you first heard the concept!

To mark the occasion, Dino D-Day is FREE this weekend so go on over and check it out if you don’t have it already. It’s also 75% off if you like it so much you want to buy it!  Big thank you goes out to Jestservers for helping provide server space for everyone this weekend.

Let me finish off this blog post by answering some of the burning questions you might have:

An animated series?! What channel will it be on?

We’re not ready to announce anything yet in this regard but as soon as we can, you’ll be the first to know!

I heard you were working on a survival mode for Dino D-Day. Is that out?

We have been working on a survival mode, yes. It is fully playable with an upgrade system, persistent leveling, and waves of hungry prehistoric reptiles eager for the taste of Allied flesh. It still needs some work on the art side though before we’re ready to show it off. This version of Dino D-Day will likely be your first taste of the new game. We’ll make this version available to our community to test and fine tune well in advance of an actual release.

Are you going to make a singleplayer campaign for Dino D-Day?

Yes! One of our primary focuses going forward will be making a singleplayer campaign for Dino D-Day. We have a story in mind and a good bit of the technical infrastructure is in place. Be sure to weigh in and let us know what you’d like to see out of a singleplayer experience!

What will happen to the team-based multiplayer game?

The existing game will remain on Steam. But we’re also porting it to a new version of the Source engine where it will undergo a good overhaul. We want to smooth out the rough edges that have been a barrier for a lot of people and make a cleaner, more polished experience.

How much is all this going to cost me?

We haven’t worked out exactly how all of this will be priced. It’s still very early in the process. However, we’d like all of our most loyal players to know that they’ll be rewarded for sticking by us for so long. Many of you discovered Dino D-Day when it was a mod or in the early days of the commercial release when we were still getting our footing. We’ll make it up to you. It means a lot to us that you saw past the rough edges of that first release, recognized the potential, and continued to come back and play!

My Steam game updated. What’s in the update?

We shipped an update to Dino D-Day that contains a few bug fixes and balance tweaks as well as a brand new map, “Pacentro”. Pacentro is a large map with a ton of underground passageways, tight alleys, and secret crawl spaces. We know some of you were expecting a much bigger update than this but the truth is, most of our work over the past several months has been rolled into the new title.

In Conclusion…

We just want to thank all of you for playing Dino D-Day and loving the world just as much as we do. We’re incredibly excited to be working with Icehouse and Tommy on this brand new chapter and we can’t wait to bring an even bigger audience into our strange, dinosaur-infested visions of World War II!

The Devs