You should record your original audio in PCM .WAV format with 16 bit depth and a 44.1khz or 48khz sample rate. This will provide the highest quality result for the final in-game audio.

To reduce the size of your initial workshop submission and make it generally easier to move around and work with, feel free to compress your audio into .MP3 format using a program such as SoundForge or iTunes before upload. If your submission is accepted, we will contact you for the original high-res .WAVs.

Package and submit the spreadsheet to us as a workshop item through the game client. If your directory of .WAVs is too big to fit into the upload quota, you can upload them to a file-hosting service such as Dropbox and provide us with a link inside the submission.

Variety, intensity, and brevity are the keys to a successful announcer.

Every line you record will be heard many times by every player that activates them. In one game, a player might hear fifteen "tower has fallen" events, three "Roshan has fallen" events, and over thirty "your [building] is under attack" events. For an announcer to remain fresh after many games, each event should have as wide a variety of available lines as possible. The Juggernaut announcer has about three variations on every line; the Dr. Kleiner announcer has as many as five for some of them. The followup mechanism gives you an easy way to create lots of variety by allowing the announcer to mix and match a base event ("your top tower has fallen") with a different set of followup lines ("that doesn't look good for you").

Go big with your performance! Your announcer gets its chance to be an interesting character for a few words at a time. Bringing lots of intensity to each bit of dialog helps make your character unique. But it's important to also record at least one "straight" version of each main event in your character's voice, to help keep the really big ones fresh. For example, if your Renaissance Faire Announcer has a line such as "Behold! Thine top tower doth find itself beseiged!", also record a basic "Your top tower is under attack" in the same voice. This will help keep your over-the-top lines from becoming repetitive, since they can be mixed in with the straightforward lines at a lower frequency.

Remember that Dota is a chaotic game and things happen very quickly. Try to keep your announcer's lines short, since the interval between a tower falling and a hero saying something else may be only a few seconds long. Long lines can be distracting to players, who are trying to focus on keeping their hero alive. Longer lines also become repetitive and tired more quickly.

Spectator-only lines, which are heard only when users equip your announcer while watching a game, have more leeway in length and content, since spectators aren't focused on cutting through noise to hear game-critical information in the same way that players are. You may mark any line as being spectator-specific, so that spectators and players can hear entirely different dialogue for the same events. In the sample spreadsheet, players hear "your tower is under attack", whereas spectators hear "radiant's tower is under attack" for the same event.

After recording your .wavs, you should fill out the spreadsheet to specify which .wav files go with which events. The following example indicates that you would like to play "announcer_battle_begin_02.wav" after the "game start" horn honks.

announcer_battle_begin_02

The battle begins!

IsGameStart

You may specify several lines for the same event, such as this example from the Dr. Kleiner announcer:

announcer_fort_rad_01	I've never seen Radiant's structures looking so fortified.	GlyphUsedGood
announcer_fort_rad_02	Radiant's structures are beautifully fortified.	GlyphUsedGood
announcer_fort_rad_03	Radiant's structures are fortified.	GlyphUsedGood
announcer_fort_rad_04	Radiant's structures are fortified. There appears to be some sort of magic at work.	GlyphUsedGood

In this case the engine will pick from one of announcer_fort_rad_01, announcer_fort_rad_02, announcer_fort_rad_03, or announcer_fort_rad_04 to play when the radiant ("good") team uses the glyph of fortification. Wherever multiple rows have identical criteria in their third column, they are considered to be alternative lines for the same event. In some cases the third column of the spreadsheet has multiple criteria. These three criteria together define the particular event that the line responds to; the wav will play only if all of them are true. In the example above, announcer_rax_fall_yr_top.wav plays when a tower has been killed and it was in the top lane and the "kill" was not a deny.

announcer_twr_fall_yr_top

Your top tower has fallen.

IsTowerKilled IsTopLane IsNotDeny

Certain optional criteria can be added to a third column to further specify when you want a wav to play: for example, you can use IsSpectator to define a wav that plays only for spectators and not for players.

announcer_rax_attack_dire_bot

Dire's bottom barracks are under attack.

IsBarracksAttacked IsBadAttacked IsSpectator IsBotLane

Certain event types are "followup" lines that optionally play after other event lines have played. In this case announcer_victory_01.wav will play after the "radiant victory!" or "dire victory!" line has played. This lets you mix and match lines for more variety like "The Radiant's Courier has been killed... Who would pick on such a defenseless creature?" by recording the "courier killed" and followup parts separately.

announcer_victory_01

A foregone conclusion, I should think.

IsFollowup_PlayerVictory

Certain lines in the spreadsheet do not have a criterion column because the game engine plays them by a different route. You should record your own version of these lines and add them to the spreadsheet as well, but leave the third column empty.

announcer_choose_hero	Choose your hero.
announcer_now_select	You may now select your heroes.
announcer_pick_yr	Your turn to pick.
announcer_pick_enm	Enemy's turn to pick.
announcer_pick_dire	Dire team pick.
announcer_pick_rad	Radiant team pick.
announcer_ban_yr	Your turn to ban.
announcer_ban_enm	Enemy's turn to ban.
announcer_ban_dire	Dire team ban.
announcer_ban_rad	Radiant team ban.
announcer_team_complete_rad	Radiant's team is complete.
announcer_team_complete_yr	Your team is complete.
announcer_team_complete_our	Our team is complete.
announcer_team_complete_dire	Dire's team is complete.

Mega kill announcers have relatively few lines but follow the same general system as above. The sample spreadsheet is:

wav name	subtitle	Criteria
announcer_kill_double_01	Double kill!	IsDoubleKill
announcer_kill_triple_01	Triple kill!	IsTripleKill
announcer_kill_ultra_01	Ultra kill!	IsQuadKill
announcer_kill_rampage_01	Rampage!	IsQuintupleKill
announcer_kill_wipeout_01	Team wipeout!
announcer_kill_spree_01	Killing spree!	IsThreeSpree
announcer_kill_dominate_01	Dominating!	IsFourSpree
announcer_kill_mega_01	Mega kill!	IsFiveSpree
announcer_kill_unstop_01	Unstoppable!	IsSixSpree
announcer_kill_wicked_01	Wicked sick!	IsSevenSpree
announcer_kill_monster_01	Monster kill!	IsEightSpree
announcer_kill_godlike_01	Godlike!	IsNineSpree
announcer_kill_holy_01	Holy shit!	IsMaxSpree
announcer_ownage_01	Ownage!
announcer_1stblood_01	First blood!	IsFirstBlood