Dota 2 engine branch (Source)

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The Dota 2 engine branch was the first Source 2 engine branch to be released, first introduced with Dota 2 Reborn update in 2015, which also makes Dota 2 the first game to use Source 2.

The Dota 2 branch (pre-Reborn) originally introduced in 2013 with the release of Dota 2, used to be the latest Source branch available, succeeding the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive engine branch, starting with Reborn update released in 2015, the game was upgraded to the then-new Source 2 engine, which makes CS:GO the latest Source 1 branch available. Additionally, this is the only Source 1 engine branch that was never licensed to third-party developers.

Features ^[confirm]

Post-Reborn (Source 2)

See also:  The Source 2 features section

These are the features introduced since Dota 2 Reborn update in 2015, which ported the game to Source 2 engine.

Panorama UI

64-bit support

Allows the game to use more than 2-4GB of system RAM and better performance.

DirectX 11 (D3D11) and Vulkan support.

Adds support for newer versions of Direct3D, aswell as new renderer "Vulkan", allowing the game to have better graphics/performance. Direct3D 9 and OpenGL continued to be supported in Dota 2 until 2021.

Physically Based Rendering support.

Volumetric lighting support.

Todo: Add features that are introduced with Dota 2 Reborn/Source 2 update.

Newer features

Features back-ported or introduced with later updates to the branch.

Hardware accelerated ray-tracing for VRAD (VRAD3)

Introduced in later version of Dota 2 and replaces VRAD2, VRAD3 now requires graphics card with ray-tracing support to preview & bake lighting. This will allow VRAD to quickly calculates lighting data.

Confirm:Confirm if Dota 2 version of VRAD3 requires ray-tracing or not. CS2 version of VRAD3 requires ray-tracing capable card to preview & bake lighting.

Pre-Reborn (Source)

New since the CS:GO engine branch is:

Cloth simulation

Real-time cloth simulation (i.e. soft-body physics).

Global lighting

The world is lit and shadowed dynamically with env_global_light (in addition to pre-compiled light).

Steamworks integration

Building upon community-driven features from Team Fortress 2 players will be able to share strategy guides and coach newer players through Steamworks.

MultiBlend Textures

4-way texture blending, upgrading/replacing WorldVertexTransition

Screen-space Anti-aliasing

Anti-aliasing for use with deferred shading. The option to enable MSAA anti-aliasing (outside of console commands) has been removed in favor of Screen-space Anti-aliasing (and/or FXAA) as these does not work correctly with deferred shading.

Screen Space Ambient Occlusion

SSAO post-process shader

Published demo file format

Dota 2 Demo Format contains a link and instructions for parsing the Dota 2 demo files

Custom Addon Support

See the Dota 2 Workshop Tools for more details.

Availability

• 2013 Dota 2
  • Upgraded to Source 2 in 2015.

See also

• Dota 2
• CS:GO engine branch