Mapping with Hammer¶

Maps are created with Hammer for Dota 2, an old Source Engine map creation tool used for Portal 2, Half Life, and other valve games.

Make sure you’ve completed the getting started tutorial first.

General Mapping Notes¶

Maps are a much larger scale in Dota 2 than they are in other Source games. Units are around 48 units wide, towers are 128x128x320 units tall.
If an entity is outside the bounds of the map, it crashes the game with no error.
AlienSwarm converts all brushwork into func_detail, so you need to seal the map with a func_brush named structure_seal. The brush should be textured nodraw.
Required entities include: info_player_start_goodguys, info_player_start_badguys, ent_dota_game_events, env_global_light.
Models require a shader that is not provided in Hammer. In your extracted gamedata, open every .vmt file and replace “GlobalLitSimple” with “VertexLitGeneric”. A tool such as Notepad++ can do this quickly.
The func_brush named “structure_seal” should be nodraw (no skybox required).

Overlay Limit¶

You cannot decompile and re-compile the dota.bsp map as it has too many overlays. The overlay limit was raised to 8192 from 512 for Dota 2, but the compiler toolchain still works under the 512 limit.

Fog of War Calculation¶

Units can climb to virtually any height within the map, but there are only five Fog or War heights defined in the Dota 2 engine. They are:

0-128: River
128-256: Midlane
256-384: Highground base
384-512: Ward spots
512-∞: Edge of the map.

The camera will stay in place above 512 units in the Z axis.

Building the NavGrid¶

Units in Dota 2 do not navigate based on the structure of the map, rather, they move on a 2D grid known as the navmesh. Every square in the navgrid has two states: pathable, and not pathable. If a square is not pathable, the unit will not walk there and cannot blink/force staff to that location. It is possible to cross unpathable areas with blinks or force movements.

Install the GNVTool¶

The GNVtool (by Penguinwizzard) converts netpbm formats to the binary GridNav format. It can do two way conversion between PBM files, which are editable in photo editing software to manually touch up the grid.

Netpbms are 1 bit bitmaps. The bitmap size must be the world size / 64. The bitmap must have dimensions divisible by 8 or it will be sheared.

Usage: code::GNVtool.exe tognv source.pbm target.gnv offsetx offsety.

Offset x/Offset y are always negative and 1/2 the dimensions of the bitmap.

You can view your navmesh in game with code::dota_gridnav_show 1.

Creating a NETPBM¶

First, open up a Hammer map.

The first two arguments you need are the dimensions of the map. This will be a rectangle aligned with the Hammer grid.

In this image it is 4096x4096:

Next, you need the offset of the map from the origin. Get the top left point of the map (in this image, -2048, 2048).

Using these values, you can create the netpbm. Divide the dimensions by 64 to get the size of the pbm file you need to make (here 64x64). Use the offset (with the y-axis-component negated, because gnv files are upside-down) to calculate the last 2 arguments to GNVTool, and you should get a gnv file that works for your map!

Creating a Minimap¶

The VTFEdit tool is used to convert an image into a .vtf minimap file.

While Valve paints their minimaps manually, it is generally sufficient to take a top-down screenshot of the map.

Open VTFEdit, select Import, find your image, and save it as MAPNAME.vtf. Under tools, select “Create VMT”. In the Options tab, for shader, select UnlitGeneric and check the boxes ‘Translucent’ and ‘Vertex Alpha’. Save it as MAPNAME.vmt.

Put both of these files in a folder named materials/overviews in your addon directory.

Next, create a new textfile named MAPNAME.txt. This is a Key-Value file denoting where the bounds of the minimap lie. The structure is as follows:

MAPNAME
{
material "overviews/MAPNAME" //Note no file extension
  //Coordinates to the upper left corner of your map
  pos_y 2560
  pos_x -2560
  scale 5.000 //Minimap scale.
  rotate 0 //Minimap rotation.  This should always be 0.
  zoom 1.0000 //Minimap zoom.  This should always be 1 unless your texture is larger than the playable bounds of your map.
}

Put this file in your code::addon/resource/overviews directory.