| BASIC GAME INFORMATION |
Year of construction: 2012
Genre: Strategy (Real-time) / RPG (Rogue/Action) / 3D
developer: valves
Publishing house:Valve
Dota started out as a custom mod for Warcraft 3 and has grown to become one of the most popular online games in the world. Following the tradition of Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Portal and Alien Swarm, Dota 2 came about by hiring Valve developers from the community who created the game modification and giving them the opportunity, together with a professional team of developers and artists from Valve, to turn their ideas into a complete game.
The game involves two teams of five people. One team plays for the light side, the other for the dark side. Each player controls one unit, called a hero. The hero can gain experience to increase his level, earn gold, buy and collect items that strengthen him or give him additional abilities. Each player constantly receives a small amount of gold from their base, and also earns small amounts of gold for killing enemy creatures and large amounts for killing heroes. Teams are dispersed along lines where they fight against enemy heroes and waves of computer-controlled creeps that regularly appear at team bases. The goal of the game is to destroy the main building at the enemy base.
| THE GRAFICAL PART |
This subsection of our review highlights the main graphical aspects of this game. Particular attention is paid to the version of the graphics engine used, the version of the API used, graphic settings and the quality of development of the main visual aspects.
| Supported OS and graphics API |
Dota 2 is supported by major Windows operating systems, which include Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Other operating systems are not currently supported by developers and are unlikely to receive support.
The priority and main graphics API for the PC version is DirectX 9.
| Game engine |
The game engine for Dota 2 is Source. Although Valve has always stated that Source was developed entirely from scratch, there are rumors that this engine is a development of the GoldSource engine, which is a modified version of the Quake engine. This is confirmed by a developer access system similar to GoldSource, as well as a comment on John Carmack’s blog: “there are still pieces of code from the Quake engine in the Half-Life 2 engine.” However, this version does not have any serious evidence. The leak of the Source source code in 2003 and parts of the code of Source games available within the Source SDK did not confirm it – no matches were found. However, the Valve Developer Wiki stated that Source is a remake of the GoldSrc engine.
Source has significant advantages in several key aspects of game development: character animation, advanced artificial intelligence, realistic physics, and shader rendering. The Source animation system allows you to create expressive characters with an endless range of facial expressions, allowing them to convey a message without saying a word. In addition to this, the characters have one of the most advanced artificial intelligences, which makes them extremely skilled allies and enemies.
Using the engine, you can easily create beautiful and realistic worlds that respond to your presence. This will allow developers to move away from creating scripted scenes that were the standard for games of the last generation, and open the door to creating completely new styles of games. Source contains complex networking code that provides support for up to 32 players over local area networks and the Internet.
The Source engine is made with the expectation of regular updates, which is reflected in its wide possibilities for modification and improvement without changing any key architectural features of the engine. In combination with the Steam digital distribution system, the engine can be updated immediately after an update is released. For example, if Source starts supporting physical cards, then all games distributed through Steam that use Source itself will begin to support them. This could be observed after the developers added High dynamic range rendering to the engine.
However, total modification of all Source games is impossible in practice, because the update system is not available to the creators of modifications, which means that only the developers themselves can develop the engine. Source uses Direct3D shaders version 3.0
| Advanced Game Settings |
Dota 2 has both basic and advanced graphics settings. The first submenu changes the screen resolution and brightness, and the advanced submenu has many additional graphic settings.
But there is, as they say, one “but”, although the extended graphic menu and richly varied graphic settings, there is no way to change them – Dota 2 does not react in any way to changing them and by default all values remain at a high level.
| General visual design and game physics |
The overall impression is that Dota 2 looks quite stylish and fully lives up to the expectations placed on it by fans – the environment, character models, lighting and textures have been taken to a whole new level. Visually, Dota 2 is reminiscent of Warcraft 3 in style, both in design and in color rendering. But still, a distinctive feature is the use of a more modern game engine.
Of course, Source made the game better graphically, but in 2012 it was already outdated. There are no plans to update it to a more advanced version with DirectX 11 in the near future. The game physics remained at the level of Warcraft 3 and we did not see any super-duper effects or destruction.
Well, then we will move directly to gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware.
| TEST PART |
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Test configuration |
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test stands |
Test bench No. 1 based on the Intel Socket 2 platform011 Test bench No. 2 based on the Intel Socket 1155 platform Test bench No. 3 based on the Intel Socket 1366 platform Test bench No. 4 based on the Intel Socket 115 platform6 Test bench No. 5 based on the AMD Soket AM platform3 Test bench No. 6 based on the AMD Soket AM3 platform Test bench No. 7 based on the AMD Soket AM platform2 Test bench No. 8 based on the Intel Socket 1155 platform Test bench No. 9 based on the AMD Soket AM3 platform Test bench No. 10 based on the AMD Soket AM3 platform+ |
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Multimedia equipment |
3D monitor LG W2363D Monitor LG E2750 Dell U3010 monitor product provided by the company AMD 3D Vision Kit product provided by the company Nvidia |
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Software configuration |
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Operating system |
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64 SP1 |
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Graphics driver |
Nvidia GeForce/ION Driver Release 304.79 AMD Catalyst 12.7 |
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Monitoring program |
MSI Afterburner v2.2 |
| GPU test |
All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The average FPS was taken as a performance indicator. Below is a video of the test segment:
Our video cards were tested at separate screen sizes of 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 at the maximum graphics quality settings allowed by War Thunder World of Planes. Multi-chip configurations from NVIDIA AMD work without problems. Permission 1680×1050 was not tested due to necessity, since at higher screen sizes video cards showed excellent performance.
Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080
At a resolution of 1920×1080 at maximum settings, acceptable and optimal FPS were shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 5750 or GeForce GTS 450 level.
Testing at maximum quality settings 2560×1600
At a resolution of 2560×1600 at maximum settings, acceptable and optimal FPS is again showed video cards of the level of Radeon HD 5750 or GeForce GTS 450. In terms of graphic performance, the game is absolutely undemanding.
| VRAM test |
Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA with separate screen sizes 1680×1050, 1920×1080 and 2560×1600.
Testing at maximum memory GPU quality settings
The optimal amount of video memory for this game is 700-1000 MB, depending on the resolution.
| CPU test |
We tested processor dependence on 12 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of video cards for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1024×768 with minimal graphics quality settings.
Testing at minimum quality settings 1024×768
All of our CPU test models provided optimal performance. Dota 2 will be enough to use two processor cores.
| RAM test |
Testing of the RAM consumed by the game was carried out by monitoring directly through the Windows task manager. The test was carried out on the basic configuration of Core i 7 [email protected] GHz with 8GB DDR3 2400 MGz pre-installed video memory.
Testing at various quality settings
Dota 2 can only be played on high graphic settings. Video memory usage in this case is equal to one gigabyte.
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| Тeating 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Rating 91% |
Graphics 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Rating 73% |
Optimization 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Rating 91% |