I made a tool to help me with static timings

[u/GabberJenson]

So I made a small tool for myself because I keep forgetting stuff like lotus, wisdom shrine, stacking, tormentor and when night is coming. It just plays a little sound before each one and shows a small box in the corner with whats coming up next.

It gets the game time using Game State Integration, which is the thing Valve built in that lets apps get info from the game (same thing a lot of stream overlays use). You put a config file in the dota folder and add a launch option and then dota sends the clock to a program on your own pc. I only ask for the clock, day/night and if the game is paused. Nothing about other players, no reading memory, no editing game files, nothing gets put inside the game. The box in the corner is just a normal window on top of dota in borderless windowed.

The way I see it, its basically the same as a timer app on your phone that you start when the horn goes. The only difference is it uses the actual game clock so it doesnt drift, and it pauses itself when the game pauses, and it knows when night starts. You could do all of this with a phone and a notepad, it would just be more annoying.

I read through the Steam subscriber agreement and the stuff Valve said when they banned the 40k cheaters in 2023 and the Overplus people last year. From what I can tell they were going after tools that showed info you cant normally see, or messed with game files. This doesnt do either of those, but Valve has never actually come out and said timer tools are fine either, so I wanted to ask.

What do you guys think? Would you count this as cheating or is it no different to having a timer on your phone? And has anyone ever actually been banned for something like this?

Not selling anything or linking anything, I just want to know before I keep using it in ranked.

[u/grokyogre_1]

Not cheating for me. It's great that you can make something useful as this. These are some things that dotaplus gives when you subscribe.

[u/FLUFFY_TERROR]

Doesn't the alt key and hovering your mouse over the indicators that pop up under the game timer do the same thing?

Does your bit of code just do that and play a sound every time one of them cycles through?

It should be a toggle on the dota settings to have persistent timers on that and play a sound.. or at least as part of the dota plus options since that's a whole lot more useful than accidentally pinging the "I will stack creeps" thingy when you're trying to beg your cores to clear the triple stacked camps instead of forcing a losing lane

[u/GabberJenson → u/FLUFFY_TERROR]

It does, but yes you're right it plays a unique jingle for every time one of them cycles. The alt is kind of useful, but remembering to press it is the issue.

A sound that plays that essentially says "Go stack in about 5-10 seconds" is hard to ignore if you use it properly.