Enhanced particle affects? No more OpenGL? New character model format? Perhaps there’s a stealth graphical update coming to Dota 2…
With the latest Dota 2 update, 7.32e, Valve has announced several changes in the technical veins of Dota 2. While the company has always been keeping up with the world's technological growth, Valve also has to weed out support for some older systems and configurations to make room for future evolution. But more that that, these changes hint at future graphical enhancements!
In a section of the news update entitled "Moving Dota Technology Forward," the developer broke down the latest tech changes in Dota 2. Let's take a look at what Valve has changed to keep Dota 2 fresh and up-to-date with the current technology.
OpenGL is no more for Dota 2
Since September 2021, Valve has announced its plan to remove support for OpenGL. The application programming interface (API) is used for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. On the 7.32e update, users will now make the complete switch to the newer API, Vulkan. Vulkan offers higher performance and more efficient CPU and GPU usage.
For macOS users, the minimum requirement is now macOS 10.13.6 with a Metal-capable GPU with either:
- AMD GCN-based GPU or newer;
- NVIDIA Kepler-based GPU or newer;
- Intel HD 4000 or newer
For Linux customers, the minimum requirement for Dota 2 is either:
- AMD GCN or newer;
- NVIDIA Kepler or newer;
- Intel HD 5000-series or newer
MOBA players traditionally don't have the super-powered PCs we might usually expect from hardcore gamers, so we do expect this to affect some people. Still if you've ever needed an excuse to update, now's the time!
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SIMD support upgrade
Valve is planning to upgrade the SIMD support from SSE2 to SSE4.1 later this year. The upgrade will result in higher performance in physics, particles, and general gameplay code.
According to Valve, almost all processors released in the past ten years support SSE4.1. This upgrade should affect only a small percentage of the Dota 2 community.
Dota 2 models revamped with ModelDoc
In perhaps the most significant announcement from this list is allusion to newer character models in Dota 2. This comes with the upgrade to the ModelDoc format for their character files.
Valve is still in the process of updating models to a newer format, ModelDoc. They will later remove a few animation-related APIs from their custom game API to back the ModelDoc's animation support after the process is over.
Essentially, this seems to suggest there could be a lot of graphical changes in the works for Dota 2. If you've ever complained about how Morphling's model is awful, then maybe it won't be like that for long with these upgrades!
Check out Esports.gg for more esports news and updates on Dota 2's recent 7.32e patch.
