New Dota 2 developer blog sheds light on Techies bug

Valve is drawing back the curtain and showcasing the weird and wonderful stories behind the development of Dota 2 and its bugs. In the first part of a new blog series, entitled “Between the Lanes,” Dota 2’s developers have highlighted how a simple string of code caused Techies’ Sticky Bombs to become homing, slow-moving death. The blog was posted late on July 26 on the Steam Community Page.

In the blog, the developers go in-depth into how the Sticky Bombs worked, and what caused the bug. It turns out that Techies’ Sticky Bombs were actually created by partially using code from the old Remote Mines (the green ones from pre-rework).

The Remote Mines were technically NPCs that could use abilities, and this attribute meant they could channel the Twin Gate. And that’s where the trouble came from: The act of channeling the Twin Gate broke the “Toss” effect that causes Sticky Bombs to normally explode quickly after being used. This effectively turned them into old-school Remote Mines that could move and chase enemies!

This bug was apparently fixed with just a single line of code being deleted. Crazy to imagine how much havoc a single line of code less than 50 characters long could cause in Dota 2. 

Of course, our explanation is woefully incomplete, and that’s why the blog exists. You should go check it out. 

This series, Between the Lanes, is a fantastic insight into our favorite MOBA. We love that we’re getting these little snippets, like the Techies bug, and they remind us of classic video “the rapidly dwindling sanity of valve programmers as expressed through code comments,” which you should also check out if you missed it.

Valve is infamous for the small, agile teams that work on its games, and getting to see behind the scenes of this unique operation is something we welcome enthusiastically!

For more Dota 2 news and guides, stay tuned to esports.gg!