Half-Life 2: Wars Beta 2.0.2 Released news

Development has been progressing at a steady pace and we're happy to release the next update to the Half-Life 2: Wars beta client. Beta 2.0.2 introduces a host of bugfixes and balance changes and most importantly adds CPU players back into the game so you can play skirmishes against AI computers by yourself. Give it a spin and let us know your feedback on the strategic AI and general gameplay balancing on our community forum.

Another key update in Beta 2.0.2 is an improvement to the team color shader and the texture masks used to display team colors on the various models. We recently brought Lt Commander onto the development team to do texture work. As such you can expect some significant improvements to HUD and interface textures in future updates.

Enough talking! You can download the full ZIP (7zip) for Beta 2.0.2 on Moddb, but we strongly recommend using Desura to handle this for you.

Full changelog for Wars 2.0.2:

New:
* Added initial version of CPU players, supported in all gamemodes

Overrun:
* Health of zombies now increases from wave 3 and onward
* Added Vortigaunt to Rebels
* Added Aid Station to Rebels
* Added Hunter to Combine

Balance:
* Hunter now shoots in bursts
* Hunter shooting range is now the same as soldiers (from 1024 to 820)
* Increased range power generators to make it easier to place buildings as Combine
* Doubled capture time control points from 12 to 24 seconds

Textures:
* Improved Team color shader
* Updated various team color masks
* New skins rebel partisan

Maps
* Updated hlw_synth (improved navigation and other tweaks)

Fixed:
* Potential crash on level shutdown
* Unit navigation incorrectly simplying climb/drop down paths
* RPG missile sound looping bug
* Control points now become neutral when the owning player is defeated
* Defeated players are now moved to spectator
* Possible to collect scrap to unfinished HQ buildings
* View offset of capture points is too low, which might result in the fog of war hiding most of the things around the point
* Incorrect Antlion Guard Cavern model (used in Overrun)
* You can no longer start an Annihilation game with all players on the same team
* You are no longer able to place (mounted) turrets in the air
* Place building type abilities not cleared when the unit executing the ability dies
* Potentially incorrect animations (t-posing) when soldiers are mounting turrets
* Right click attack enemy with stalker broken

New Commands and ConVars:
* wars_build_instant (cheat) - build units instantly (ignoring build times)
* wars_strategic_enable (cheat) - Enable CPU Player for specific player
* wars_strategic_disable (cheat) - Enable CPU Player for specific player
* wars_strategic_debugprint (cheat) - Prints debug information about a CPU player

Sounds:
* Combine faction now plays a "Research Complete" sound when an upgrade finished

Misc:
* Updated to Awesomium 1.7 RC3 (used for displaying news in the main menu)
* Removed attribute and player editor buttons from sandbox (currently broken)