Dota 2: Open Role Playing Game

Introduction

Dota 2: Open Role Playing Game is a Warcraft III map that I developed for fun. Perhaps this may sound absurd, but I got a random idea to develop Dota 2 in orpg version, I thought of typical but fun gameplay with fancy graphic. I'm making this map as a fanmade of the original game Dota 2 that developed by IceFrog and Valve, no copyright infringement intended. DotA itself is stand for Defense of the Ancient. This quick development of alpha release is just for testing purpose. Any feedback to improve the project is really appreciated.

Current Available Hero
Only few hero currently are available, I pick the role that does suit for generic orpg that you usually played in this early release. And of course, more Hero will be available in the future release!

Sven, Rogue Knight

Sven is the bastard son of a Vigil Knight, born of a Pallid Meranth, raised in the Shadeshore Ruins. With his father executed for violating the Vigil Codex, and his mother shunned by her wild race, Sven believes that honor is to be found in no social order--but only in himself. After tending his mother through a lingering death, he offered himself as a novice to the Vigil Knights, never revealing his identity.

Hero Type: Strength

Lyralei, Windrunner

The western forests guard their secrets well. One of these is Lyralei, master archer of the wood, and favored godchild of the wind. Known now as Windrunner, Lyralei's family was killed in a storm on the night of her birth--their house blown down by the gale, contents scattered to the winds. Windrunner fires her arrows true to their targets. She moves with blinding speed, as if hastened by a wind ever at her back.

Hero Type: Agility

Rylai Crestfal, Crystal Maiden

Born in a temperate realm, raised with her fiery older sister Lina, Rylai the Crystal Maiden soon found that her innate elemental affinity to ice created trouble for all those around her. Rylai found herself banished to the cold northern realm of Icewrack, where she was taken in by an Ice Wizard who had carved himself a hermitage at the crown of the Blueheart Glacier.

Hero Type: Intelligence

Purist Thunderwrath, Omniknight
Purist Thunderwrath was a hard-fighting, road-worn, deeply committed knight, sworn to the order in which he had grown up as squire to elder knights of great reputation. He had spent his entire life in the service of the Omniscience, the All Seeing One. There can be no question that the glorious powers that imbue him, and give his companions such strength in battle, are real beyond any doubt.

Hero Type: Strength




System Feature
Currently only few. At the moment, I'm not intend to include something that need a long time to finish such as fullscreen inventory system - since I intend to make a quick development for this early alpha release, so people able to test it by themselves. but in the future, I probably will include more advance systems, at least before version 1.0 is out which is not either alpha or beta. Fancy and advance hero pick system is implied in the project for this early alpha release, since I'm not really interested on typical tavern pick for this map.

Alliance
Each player is started in the game as enemies, so expect PvP battleground when player out from city (player get invulnerability while staying in the city). But don't panic, if you desire, you can make alliance with other player as well (Check F9 in the game for more info and command).

Screenshots
4 recent ingame screenshots for this early alpha release. I black masked the minimap to avoiding the early map spoiler. World of Warcraft is actually what inspire me on the Terrain.

Download
Since I'll be busy from this week forward, I've decided to release an alpha version of this map so at least people able to test the map. This early alpha release is developed around 2 weeks of my october boredom, taking a break from developing my huge fanmade project Fairy Tail: Battle of Magic.

Please note that this version is for testing purpose and far from final version. More content will be coming in the future! Download the 1st early alpha release here.
Current Map Size is around 3.6 MB.

Note: Added quick update version 0.1b with multiplayer issue fixed.

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September Writing

Phew. What a month. September was a little bit hectic.

It started with my first overseas press trip. With less that a week's notice, I was heading to Montreal to play Far Cry 3 and Assassin's Creed 3. That was... an experience. Montreal is a phenomenally beautiful city, and it turns out I know quite a lot of awesome people who live there. I have extensive previews coming up in future issues of Hyper and PC Powerplay for those two games, so I won't say too much about them here for now.

Then, not long after I got back was 2012's Freeplay Games Festival. It was a really, really great festival this year, and I wrote some of my thoughts about it for The Conversation. I also had a couple of speaking commitments for this year's festival, which was exciting and scaring. During the weekend conference, I chaired a panel about game jam cultures. Earlier in the week, on Tuesday, I was on a panel at a Re:Play session (events run by both Freeplay and ACMI) called "Postcards From Imaginary Worlds" with Christy Dena and Ben McKenzie, and chaired by Dan Golding. We spoke about all different kinds of engagements with virtual worlds, and I spoke at length about Towards Dawn. I really enjoyed both talks, and they had fairly positive responses, so that is great. When video or audio of them go online, I'll link them here and you can decide for yourself. Also, before the festival started, I was interviewed on Freeplay's website quickly.

Speaking of Freeplay. There was an amazing student game on display there called Ann & Beanie. It is about five minutes long and absolutely beautiful. I strongly recommend you play it.

At Games On Net this month I have two "You Know What I Love?" columns. In one I got all romantic and talked about dawn and dusk. In the other I talk about chunky guns.

At Unwinnable I only wrote three pieces this month. I wrote "Pocket Treasures" columns about the games Tasty Fish and Bitless, both of which I really enjoyed. Then, for Unwinnable's September theme week (this month on 'Space') I wrote about the subjective ways we perceive reality in Inception, Spec Ops: The Line, and Mark of the Ninja. I've been reading a lot of phenomenology for my PhD lately. Does it show?

My "A Sum of Parts" column at Gameranx in September was all about my 2012 GOTY-thus-far, Ziggurat. I've had something of a Ziggurat renaissance these past few months and have formed an even deeper appreciation of it than I previously had. It was still a challenge, though, to write four different articles about an iOS game, but I'm happy with what I was able to say. Firstly I wrote about the pleasure unique to touchscreen games of watching your own thumbs dance across the screen, doing things your mind can't comprehend. Next I wrote about the way Ziggurat deals with repetition through its constantly progressing narrative. Third, I discussed one of the worst feelings I've ever experienced in gaming, which is the realisation that I have just been too greedy and impatient. And finally, I wrote about Ziggurat's unique control scheme that brings together old and new game design conventions.

And that's the only writing I have online this month, I think. I've also been busy writing academically, though. Last week I submitted my first ever scholarly book chapter to an anthology. It was called "'You really are you, right?': Cybernetic Memory and the Construction of the Posthuman Self in Videogames." It's all about Final Fantasy VII and the complex way Cloud's actual identity is constructed on memories that are kind of his but also kind of not his (through the way he watches Zack and then acts the way he interprets Zack). Then I tie this relationship of Cloud and Zack back to the way the player identifies with Cloud, and the complex network of memories going on there. I'm really happy with it! And, knowing academic publishing, maybe you can read it in a year! I should also thank Cameron Kunzelman for giving me some really great edits on this one.

But the vast majority of my time this month (asides from international press trips and week-long videogame festivals) has been taken up by my PhD's confirmation paper. I have to write a 20,000 word paper talking about what I am going to talk about in my thesis, pretty much. It's been really tough but also really rewarding, as it's forced me to really find the vocabulary I need to say what it is I want to say. So that has been intense and something else I wrote... but you'll probably never read it, sorry. But I wrote it, damn it!

And those last two things are there to pretty much act as my excuse for not having my Spec Ops: The Line 40,000 word close critical reading out yet. After this week, October should be 'relatively' quite for me, and I'm really hoping to get this out by the end of the month. Several people have been awesome enough to give up some time to do some edits for me and give me some feedback, and once I assimilate all that into it, do a final proofread, and get it formatted, it should be ready to go. So hopefully, other deadlines willing, that will be out by the end of this month. My apologies it has taken so long.

And that is what I have been doing in September.

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Stepping Down

Several months ago, a Borderlands 2 developer called a new game mode that strives to make the game more accessible 'girlfriend mode'. It wasn't the official name of the mode, just one developer's off-the-cuff remark in the middle of an interview.

When this happened, I reacted angrily on Twitter (as many did), and I tweeted that I would no longer buy Borderlands 2. Considering that yesterday I bought Borderlands 2, perhaps I need to admit that I may have over-reacted.

Casual sexism should, of course, always be called out. Consistent, unthinking reinforcing of gendered power relations (such as the notion that it is 'girlfriends' who will most need this mode, not 'partners') that are most pervasive in society and which need attention drawn to them each and every time. (As always, The Border House went through this superbly).

But perhaps my casual slacktivism was no better, my off-the-cuff boycott no better than some developer's off-the-cuff casual sexism.

Or perhaps I just lack commitment and really like Borderlands, and perhaps that just makes me part of the problem.

Or perhaps I should just think about the things I say online for a few seconds before I say them.

Probably some combination of all of these.

So calling the mode 'girlfriend mode', even unofficially, was a blatant example of casual sexism, subjacating women within videogame culture as second-class citizens. I'm really disappointed that rather than apologise for the poor word choice, Gearbox stubbornly insisted the developer "wasn't a sexist". Whether or not the developer is a 'sexist' is beside the fact that he said something sexist.

But, really, me not playing the game isn't going to change that. And I think I perhaps overreacted to what was casually sexist, berating when perhaps a calmer and more accessible conversation (maybe a 'boyfriend mode' conversation about privilege lolol) could've taken place. At the end of the day, not playing Borderlands 2 isn't going to make our culture any less hostile or uninviting to females, but calling out casual and blatant sexism whenever we see it will.

So I'm not angry I added my voice to the many others who were (and are) pissed off, and I would not at all begrudge any one who still decides not to purchase Borderlands 2 over this. But in this specific instance I've decided to go back on my word to not purchase the game, and it seemed worthy of a blog post before someone digs up the old tweet where I claimed I would not buy it and rubbed it in my face.

So now that that is said and done, I can head back over to Twitter and complain about how Borderlands 2's inventory system is somehow worse than Borderlands.


EDIT: So this post actually sparked a really great Twitter conversation about authorial intent and other things that you can read on Storify, here: http://storify.com/Acccent/authorship-and-interpretation-in-games

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