AWKWARD ZOMBIE

A Vietnamese beta tester has leaked Dota 2′s entire game client, as well as all of its files, to the Internet. The leak appears to be playable – but do you really want to risk having your Steam account blocked just so you can play an illegal leak? Besides, you can’t even play online! What’s Dota without online play? Nothing.In any case, the leak is already being datamined, and people have found some wondrous things – from the placeholders Valve uses for their spell icons, to the one phrase every single hero has in common (Perhaps a secret message? “Shitty Wizards” does resemble “Fart Cops”, does it not? Is Valve trying to tell us the name of their next game?), all the speech files of all of the heroes, every single backstory of every single backstory, a massive pastebin containing just about every caption string in the whole game, a test model for a lovely hat, various in-game models, all the way to… some very interesting code. Let’s take a look at that one right now.

/src/game/server/ep3/weapon_icegun.cpp
/src/game/server/ep3/weaponizer_concrete.cpp
/src/game/server/ep3/weaponizer_liquid.cpp
/src/game/server/ep3/weaponizer_metal.cpp
/src/game/server/ep3/weapon_flamethrower.cpp
Oof! Oh, daisies. Be right back!

Okay, got my new underpants on. What’s this? An ice gun? A flame thrower? Holy crap! New weapons? And a mention of the mysterious Weaponizer weapon? Did it really survive the Directed Design Experiments? The code can’t be that old – Dota 2 only began development in late 2009 or early 2010. There’s more interesting stuff in the links above - some sort of in-game store featuring bundles, gear, tools and effects, as well as an option to view “new” items. I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot like micro-transaction. Could Dota 2 have that as well? And does that mean it’ll be a F2P title? Christ, who knows at this point?

There’s also some code labelled “sob”, with mentions of ”func_nebula”, “sob_server_ship_system” and “sob_flightplan”. Could Valve be working on some sort of space flight game? Is it Gunman Chronicles 2? Ricochet 2? The long-awaited Fart Cops? This SOB thing sounds interesting, even if it’s acronymized just like “son of a bitch”.

In any case, you won’t be getting any links to the leak from us, and we advise you not to download it. Sure, for Valve it might be great for feedback purposes, but it’s still a loss for them and the beta testers, so we’re not touching the thing. Still, I have to admit that this stuff has me quite excited for Dota 2… and, yes, Half-Life 2: Episode Three. A flamethrower! Would you imagine that.

Yep. It's pretty obvious, even if DotA initially originated from WC3 I doubt Blizz gave their consent to their characters being in this second release. S'why there's just enough changes to make them different.