An Old Man on a horse, a Bug and a Gargoyle walk into a tavern…

With The International arriving in just over a month, we want to give the competing teams some time to practice with a stable Hero roster, and as few new bugs from us as possible. With that in mind, after today’s update we’ll be clamping things down a tad, focusing on getting the existing feature and hero set polished to a high sheen. Fear not, we will continue to work on new heroes internally, getting them ready for a release once The International is over.

Today’s update also includes the first of a planned set of improvements to the in-game tools for Workshop contributors. This first piece is an Import Wearable wizard, which will handle the compilation validation of wearables for you. All you need to do is model, texture, and skin the wearable to your favorite hero, and then the Import tool will do the rest. When you submit an imported model, it’ll pack it into an organized .zip file, which makes it much easier for us to get it into the game, thereby increasing the number of community submissions we’ll be able to include. We’d love to hear any feedback or suggestions you have for this tool, or future tools, so once you’ve checked it out, head over to the new Workshop Tools forum.

Community:

– The DotaCinema guys would like you to see this video.

– Just getting started? This video tutorial is an oldie but still relevant.

– The Prodota2 league now has a ticket available in the Dota 2 Store.

Captain’s Changelog, Dota date July 26th 2012.