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By:
StoneCold
For the NewsHost Community
v.1.0
Introduction
This guide will show you how to host your own dedicated server for playing DotA 2 offline.
Wait a minute, did he just say offline, as in, play DotA 2 on LAN without an internet connection ?
Yes, you read correctly, it is possible to play DotA 2 offline, thanks to some ingenious Chinese
crackers.
They did create a frontend client which simplifies the procedure, however, it isn't worth
while for those of us who only speak English as the application is written in Chinese. This
guide will not include any references to the application they made as it is useless to us.
It's very important that you READ all of the instructions carefully for each section, because if you
misread something then chances are that you're going to make a botch of your installation and
might blame me and say but "this doesn't work". It does work, myself and a couple of friends already
tested it, so what I'm about to share with you is legit. So without further a due, let's get started!
Step 1 - Requirements
You'll need the following to get everything working, luckily it's not a lot:
a) The Steam client with a copy of DotA 2 on your Steam account
b) One command line switch that you need to add to your DotA 2 link in your Steam library
Server Configuration:
f) Ensure that you have extracted the dedicated server enabler files in your dota 2 server
folder at this stage
g) Edit the server.bat file according to your liking
You should see the following inside the .bat file:
revLoader.exe -launch sv.exe -game dota -window -console -insecure +hostname DotA_2 +sv_lan 1
+ip 127.0.0.1 +dota_wait_for_players_to_load 1 +dota_wait_for_players_to_load_count 10
+dota_wait_for_players_to_load_timeout 60 +dota_force_gamemode 1 +dota_start_ai_game 1
+map dota_winter.bsp
As you can see there are quite a lot of command line switches here and each of them does a specific
function. Try not to edit the majority of them, otherwise you might remove something that is crucial
to the functioning of the server, but you can experiment (but do so at your own risk).
You might want to edit the following "basic" settings to get a server started:
+ip 127.0.0.1 (this IP address must reflect the server PC's LAN IP address, for e.g. 192.168.1.1)
+dota_force_gamemode 1 (this command determines what type of mode the server
should run as)
Here's a list of gamemodes you can get from dota_force_gamemode (with each number referring to
a specific game mode that you can specify with the "dota_force_gamemode" command):
1. All Pick
2. Captain's Mode
3. Random Draft
4. Single Draft
5. All Random
6. Unknown (Looks like it has only a pool of heroes for "new players", and a 3 minute picking time)
7. Diretide
8. Reverse Captain's Mode
9. The Greeviling
10. Tutorial
11. Mid Only
12. Least Played
13. New Player Pool (same as 6 except with 1 minute picking time and non-playable heroes grayed
out instead of not visible)
Everything else after 13 shows up as #game_mode_xx, and is just all pick.
Feel free to experiment with the different modes, I didn't test all of them.
h) +dota_start_ai_game 1 (I didn't really experiment with this command, I think it forces the server
to start an "All Pick" mode with bots enabled, so I guess you can try the numbers stipulated above in
conjunction with this command and see if it works that way.
Alternatively, you can also have a look at the server.cfg file located in "dota 2 server\dota\cfg"
where you'll find these two commands:
dota_bot_disable "0" (if set to 1, it should completely disable the bots from joining
any game you host on the dedicated server)
dota_bot_set_difficulty "3" (Here you can set a value from 0 to 3, don't know if it's from easiest to
most difficult, or vice versa, feel free to experiment)
i) +map dota_winter.bsp (this command as you would've guessed it changes the map you play on)
There are four maps available, with the 5th being the tutorial map:
"dota"
"dota_autumn"
"dota_diretide_12"
"dota_winter"
"tutorial_m1"
And that's basically it with regards to all of the most pivotal commands you'll most likely want to
change on your server. Keep in mind that you cannot add too many command line switches in the
server.cfg batch file, otherwise it will give you an error when starting the server. For the other
commands I didn't cover, feel free to experiment and see what they do, as I'm not going to cover
each one of them in detail as part of the guide.
g) Once Steam has restarted in offline mode, go back to your library and before you launch the
game, make sure that you've enabled the console command line switch for DotA 2 (see Step 3 client configuration)
h) Start DotA 2 via Steam, you'll notice that the console window will be open as well once you're at
the main menu
i) In the console window, you need to type "connect " and then specify the IP address of the server
machine on your LAN. For e.g. "connect 192.168.1.1" and press "Enter" (see Figure 4.3 below):
Figure 4.4 - All Pick mode, but you can't choose a side
k) As you can see from the screenshot above, you can't pick a side, therefore you'll need to do it via
the console by using the "jointeam" command. The available options are:
jointeam "good" (radiant)
jointeam "bad" (dire)
jointeam "spec" (spectator)
Once you've selected a side, your name will then appear under the team you selected
(see Figure 4.5):
Figure 4.5 - Team selection screen after manually specifying a team via console
TAKE NOTE:
There is grace period of 1min 30 seconds whereby all players (10 max) should connect to the
server. If you have bots enabled, all the empty player slots will be filled by bots automatically on
both sides once the timer hits zero. I haven't tested if the game will start if you uneven teams with
only human players. Secondly, I highly doubt that any players will be able to join a game in
progress. What I have tested though, is that you can reconnect again if you get disconnected
during a match and there appears to be no time restriction on that.
l) After the timer hits zero, you can pick your hero. There is also a 30 seconds timer on the hero
select screen but I suppose those of you who play "All Pick" mode knew that already. Anyhow, once
the countdown timer hits zero, bots will automatically join the game (see Figure 4.6 below):
END OF GUIDE
DotA 2 Offline LAN Guide - compiled by StoneCold - 2013