Defense of the Ancients (DotA for short) is a mod for the Warcraft 3 computer game. IT Works quite well under Linux, using Wine.

You will need to install Warcraft III: ROC, the Frozen Throne expansion, the latest patch, the DotA map itself and maybe the AI version as well. Then, you may need to configure audio, or a larger / widescreen resolution. Lastly, you'll probably want to run the game with the -opengl option.

For troubleshooting, please see the Issues section, and post further questions in the Talk for this page.

Installation

You will need the original CDs or ISO images. Mount those as appropriate, usually to /media/cdrom or /mnt/cdrom.

You could install the game manually via wine /mnt/cdrom/install.exe, but the preferred way is with Play On Linux, a wine wrapper which will set up a clean, neat wine environment (called a WINEPREFIX) specifically for the game. Run Play on Linux, click the Install button, and select "Warcraft III:" from the list (it's under games). Subsequently, install The Frozen Throne expansion in the same manner.

Next is the game patch. Play on Linux may not feature the latest version (1.23 at the time of this writing). You will need to download it manually, cd to your wineprefix (usually $HOME/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/WarcraftIII) and run it from there.

Lastly, download the DotA custom map and place it somewhere in the Maps subdirectory. If you install the AI (bots) version as well, remember to put it into another subdirectory of Maps (feel free to create one).

Configuration

Again, in Play On Linux, select "Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne" and click on "Configure this application". A dialog with several options will pop up.

First, select "Configure wine" and you will receive the standard wine setting dialog. Be sure to visit the "Audio" tab to select a working audio driver, usually ALSA, but OSS or something else might work if ALSA doesn't. Click "Ok".

After that, do an "Edit registry" to set the screen resolution, like so. You will especially want to do this if you have a widescreen monitor, as the game does not support this out the box, due to it's age.

Running the thing

Depending on the strength of your system, and the level of support for you graphics card, the game might run fine, or sluggishly slow.

If it does runs slow, you'll have to run the game with the -opengl option. Sadly, Play for Linux will not do that for you, and you'll have to run the game manually. Create a shell script / application launcher / menu item / whatever with the following command:

WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/WarcraftIII wine $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/Program\ Files/Warcraft\ III/war3.exe -opengl

Modify for your wineprefix, installation location if and as needed.

Issues

Other that the quite rare crash, some of these might occur.

ATI cards

There are two drivers for ATI Radeon (sm) (tm) (whatever) -based graphics cards - the opensource ati driver, and ATI's own proprietary fglrx driver. The opensource one is GeneRally better on all fronts but 3D acceleration, which is what you need here. This may well turn into a problem.

Newer distros, say Ubuntu 9.04 (out April 2009) features a version of the Xorg server that is thus-far incompatible with the proprietary driver. We're waiting for a fix from ATI, but until one arrives, stick with the 8.x system if at all possible.

DotA AI map and Ubuntu 9.10

Upon selecting the map in "Custom Game" mode, your screen may freeze. Use CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE (if you've reenabled it), or do a hard reboot. There are some workarounds - loading a early savegame usually works, but using an older Ubuntu is probably better.

ALT-TAB

May not work.

References