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New RTS Based on DotA Offers Native Linux Client
S2 Games, longtime fans of the "Defense of the Ancients" (DotA) mod for Warcraft 3, have decided to create an entire game based around it (which IceFrog had no objection to). Without offending their still-active NDA, I can say that Heroes of Newerth is shaping up to be a very polished RTS, with the ability to play both via S2's own online service and local games, something that even Blizzard seems to be missing these days. Unlike most publishers, S2 has also decided to simultaneously release Windows, Mac, and Linux clients, making this one of the best looking games that I have ever seen on my Linux box. Additionally, S2 would like to invite another 400 players to the HoN beta, so if you are an RTS fan (and especially if you are a DotA fan) just send an email to scuttlemonkey at slashdot dot org with the subject line of "HoN Beta Key Request" and I'll reply to the first 400 requests as best I can. Update 20:37 GMT by SM: In case you don't notice in your haste to create a beta account, let me remind you that this game is still under strict NDA, so please no specifics in the discussion below. Update 00:01 GMT by SM: Well, given the 800+ emails that flooded my inbox in the first half hour or so we're all out of beta keys, but keep an eye out for a release date. Update 01:00 GMT by SM: Apparently your friends over at S2 games were quite impressed with the level of interest and are furnishing another 2,000 beta keys for me to continue working through the requests in my inbox (I'm at around 1,500 requests total as of this update, and only about 350 keys sent out). Please be patient as I slowly try to catch up. Also a point of clarification, while IceFrog doesn't mind S2 diving in to this space with a game based on DotA (competition is good in the long run after all), he wanted to make sure loyal fans of DotA knew that he plans to continue developing and improving DotA for WC3. Update 7/10/2009 13:06 GMT by SM: to all those still waiting on a beta invite, please be patient. I use gmail as the central repository for my email for ease-of-use, and while I was only expecting to have to hand out 400 keys, apparently gmail has an email cap of 500 per day. Last night my account got locked for excessive use, so I am waiting on the wrist-slap to expire so I can continue my key-spam. It looks like all who have requested a key so far will get one.
Gaming comes to Linux, this is the end for Tux Racer!
Trolling is a art,
Correct me if I'm wrong, I never was a big RTS fan, but I _think_ DotA is where all the tower defense games spawned off of?
I for one would like to see this genre die already. It's been done. And done. And done to death.
I've never experienced any game which has such a hostile community as DOTA. The torrent of abuse you can get from your team mates, even if you're winning, is unreal and to say the experience for noobish types is unpleasant is an understatement.
They're so deadly serious and so intolerant, it spoils a good game. I did stick with it a while and get reasonable with it but I got tired of the abuse hurled around at everyone and gave it up. By contrast Footman Frenzy and Maffarazzo TD are much more tolerable.
For those unaware of what DotA is, it's a team based strategy game where you control a single character (called your hero) with varied abilities. The goal is simply to destroy the enemy team's main structure, which is protected by multiple towers of progressive difficulty and, of course, enemy heroes.
During the course of the game, you attempt to kill as many neutral computer units as possible in order to collect money, buy items to improve your character, gain experience and skills, and kill enemy heroes. When you get into the strategy a bit more, there are far more goals to attend to, such as harassing enemy heroes and denying them of experience and money, 'ganking' enemies with your teammates, and etc. There is a lot of depth in the game play and lots of general strategies to pick from.
As the subject says, DotA is really the only game I play these days, and I've been playing it for years. There are around 100 heroes, each with their own set of unique abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. The game is intuitive to play and always interesting. It also runs on old hardware, being based on a blizzard game, although it can take a while to load.
If this game is even a fraction as fun as DotA, and has a native Linux client, it's a must buy from me.
Isn't Guinsoo (the original DotA Allstars developer) already making a game like this, called League of Legends?
http://www.leagueoflegends.com/
Demigod only came out a few months ago, turned out to be a worthwhile alternative to DotA, and surprisingly more friendly to newcomers. The biggest downside to Demigod however is the conversion from the Wine-friendly stardock client to the newer Impulse client, based on dotnet2. As yet, mono isn't up to the task of running the client, which basically puts linux out of the picture for what would be a very fun game (note* warcraft3 runs flawlessly). A native linux remake of DotA could be very enticing for us penguin lovers.
A Linux client? I'll buy it. Where do I sign up?
... och spelar lite Heroes of Newerth ...
Some of the aspects of the game I really enjoy:
1) Having it so that certain buildings can't be built until you have other supporting structures built before that. It's almost like a "tree" of "things" you can "build."
2) Being able to highlight a bunch of your army and send them off to fight people on the other side of the map. Tremendous fun.
3) The developers, knowing how much people enjoy 2) have implemented "keyboard shortcuts" to make bundling up a group of units and sending them off as one easier. I can't discuss the specific keys being used, but on ANY STANDARD KEYBOARD, you'll be able to press a combination of keys that will "store" your group selected in memory. Not just that, but you can RECALL this group that was stored at a prior time by pressing yet another patented group of keys. What will they think of next?!
4) Being able to choose more than one race as the army under your control. So Race 1 can fight Race 2 and employ different tactics!
5) Not being able to build until you "harvest resources." You have to send out a bunch of little guys (I'd probably call them peons) to get these resources for you before you can build any of the buildings and get a start on your "tech tree."
I'm sorry if you don't understand this, but you can use Facebook without trying to get as many friends as possible.
And yes, I dislike Facebook and generally have a lower opinion of anyone who subscribes to such retarded friend ePenis contests, I'm sorry, social networking sites.
Sounds like someone got unfriended. :(
Before anyone feels the need to reply:
Yes, I realize I am in fact an idiot who didn't even fully read the summary in his haste to get in on the action.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
If a post does breach the NDA, will it be deleted?
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
They're not in the business of raising your opinion, BitZtream, rather to take advantage of a possibly symbiotic arrangement with a company that may help them market their product. That said, on behalf of these guys I apologize for letting you down and suggest you try DopeWars which it addition to the platforms this game runs on also runs on the TI-82.
Calling out bogus battery capacity claims.
Isn't that what "Post Anonymously" is for?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Yes, the problem with most of facebook is that most people are immature and use it obsessively and abuse it. But saying Facebook sucks is like saying battle.net sucks; most of battle.net is rabid teenagers, but battle.net is a very good tool when used right. Facebook is a good tool in the right hands. I use it to join my friends' capture the flag games all the time, and its much easier than getting another site, because we all already have accounts on facebook.
I'm sorry that your ePenis is so small. I hear they have pills for that, check your e-mail for more details.
am i missing something here? they advertise a game, but any information except what genre it is and what plattform it supports is under an NDA. the website is a single image showing of artwork which is so heavily borrowed from warcraft its not funny. why does this make it on the front pa... oh nevermind, it's running on linux, free pass no matter how crappy it is.
let me remind you that this game is still under strict NDA, so please no specifics in the discussion below.
Yeah. Right. That will work! </sacrasm>
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
If you have RTFA or not, I share your sentiment 100%.
There are just a lot of immature gamers out there and on Battle.net, there are a lot of people who really, really, really care about their statistics. Their win-loss rating is like a measure of self worth to them.
A long while ago a roommate and I played Starcraft online together for fun. Most matches were 2v2 so we'd go and do that as a team. Now we were pretty good, in part because we worked together all the time, but we still made mistakes and lost sometimes. So I remember in one match, my roommate screwed up and an enemy player got in his base (one of those zerg tunnel things). He survived the attack, but it crippled him to the point that there really wasn't going to be a recovery. So I hunkered down and built up my defense. As soon as they finished off my roommate, one of the guys on the other team told me to quit. I said no thanks, I'll play to the end. He started berating me saying I had no chance to win. I told him this was probably correct, but I'd play anyhow. He got furious that I wouldn't give him a quick win. So I decided, rather than play to win, I'd just play to stay. I was able to hold out for a long time and he kept screaming at me more and more. I pointed out he could leave any time he liked, but he wouldn't because that would hurt his stats. He did win, in the end, but was just livid with anger.
That just seemed to be the general attitude on bnet. People didn't play to have fun, they played to have big numbers, and hence were assholes about anything that would threaten that, including playing with team members that were less than perfect.
Heck for that matter people did stupid things like setup 7 players vs 1 computer to boost their ratings.
has a long history of supporting linux. Both of their previous titles, Savage 1 & Savage 2 also have native linux clients.
HoN is the most polished game I've seen from s2games.
Kudos to them for continuing to provide linux games that don't suck and for taking the time to listen to their community.
We appreciate it Marc (Maliken)!
Thanks.
in World of Warcraft:
A PvP battleground implementation of DotA.
Seriously. DotA, first-person perspective. You and 39 of your closest friends plus auto-spawning NPC combatants slugging it out to advance battle lines and destroy opposing infrastructure. The other faction, doing exactly the same thing. And trying to kill you in the process, just like you're trying to do to them.
Add combat vehicles... maybe aircraft with dogfighting... yeah. That's what Blizz shoulda done.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Im a beta tester and believe me, it hurts to not be able to share any infos. Suffice it to say this is probably the most polished and fun game Ive ever beta tested. There's tons of invites floating around you should try to get in on the action.
You're thinking of Sunken D from Starcraft. There are probably even earlier tower defense games, but this was the really, really big one (it was the Killer Game for an already Killer Game; I've bought several copies of SC over the years just to play this game, those damned keys are hard to keep track of).
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
IceFrog didn't create DOTA, so they didn't really need his blessing anyways. Allstars was/is a knockoff of the original Reign of Chaos DOTA. At this point it's pretty much entirely original though, although back when Allstars first came out it was just a slightly edited knockoff of the original DOTA.
sorry you don't have any friends. loser.
I love DotA, and I would be so happy about a game based on the concept which has a native client. I'd hope though that it included some kind of AI script. And similarly, one great thing about DotA is that Icefrog updates the game every now and then, I wonder if they'd do a similar thing for HoN.
Does anyone remember Aeon of Strife (AOS) for original Starcraft? if i remember rightly that was the genesis of this style of game...
I wanna send you a thank you email, but I'm sure your inbox is full enough.
So I'll just do it here. Thanks!!
Someone explain this to me, because I feel like I have to be missing something.
This is an RTS, based on a mod for an RTS? What does that mean?
In other words, reading the article and knowing only a little about DotA, I think: Game in the same genre as Warcraft 3, based on a Warcraft 3 mod... won't that just basically be like Warcraft 3? I don't follow how a DotA RTS is distinct from that.
how you referenced frogie's post directly instead of linking to the thread, considering the thread has the lovable dota community comparing the 2 games in very colourful language. There are some very valid points in that thread though, this IS a graphical port from the looks of it. A lot of skills seem to be directly taken, along with heroes and items and (gasp) stats. Couldn't someone have taken a risk and done something different? a whole new set of heroes and items? I dont think its appropriate to abuse you for ripping it off considering the high cost of game development these days but surely, something better than brain dead cloning?
Perhaps a symptom of the larger problems that are hindering your social life? I don't blame you for not wanting a facebook account. What are you going to do with it- look up acquaintances from high school and exchange awkward "hi, how are you"'s? Sounds like a lot of trouble just to let your old friends know you still haven't finished college ^_^
Ever since they released the award winning Savage, a very good RTS / FPS combo, with an advertised (!) native Linux client right from the get go, S2 Games has a special place in my heart. They deserve support ever since they started publishing. Buy their Games, they are very cool and fun to play and also run great on older hardware.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
...is the link in the description a bit... lacking... in real information. All I get is a background image and not much more.
Why no mention of League of Legends? They both sound like the same game made by different people, only LoL is made by guys that work on DotA (Icefrog included) http://www.leagueoflegends.com/index.php
You're dead on. I think part of the problem is that it's all kids playing Dota. Most adults are playing WoW.
That's the ONE reason I almost wouldn't mind paying $x/month for Dota. I think it would weed out 99% of the kids. (Maybe 99% of the players as well.)
The attitudes are quite hilarious. Everyone runs local banlists and if you dominate 99 games and lose the 100th, you can get banned. It's as if no player is willing to admit they have ever lost a match before when every game has a winning and losing team.