<a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/blizzbobarrabas/"><img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/spectral_merasmus.jpg" width="100%" border="0"></a>

Welcome to your DOOM... AARON A. AARONSON!

Yes, we're talking directly to YOU, Aaron A. Aaronson! This prophecy of your death is coming from INSIDE YOUR OWN COMPUTER! AWOOOOOO!

Hello, everyone else! What you just experienced was a brave new frontier in Halloween scaring technology: personalized terror! Rather than generically scaring all of you a little, from this Halloween forward, we’re going to scare one specific person... TO DEATH! Admittedly, much like the Human Genome Project, this is going to take some time. So everybody be patient - you'll all be scared eventually. Also, if any of you know Aaron <i>B.</i> Aaronson and don't want to deprive him of the thrill of dying of terror next year, don’t tell him about this blog post.

But just because we’re all now living in the amazing far future of scaring, being frightened in ways that until moments ago seemed impossible, that doesn’t mean we don’t have some more traditional Halloween horror planned for you. First of all, we’re happy and scared to announce the Fourth Annual Scream Fortress Halloween update, dedicated to the loving memory to Aaron A. Aaronson. It doesn’t ship until tomorrow, but you can <a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/blizzbobarrabas/">read all the eerie details here</a>.

Secondly, we’re pleased to present the first in our new series of Halloween-themed release notes. It’s a terrifying little tidbit of fearful fact reporting we call “John Carpenter’s Changes to the Functionality of Halloween Gifts”! Last year, gifts spawned publicly and could be claimed by whoever got there first. This year, players will receive private gift spawns that they can grab at their leisure without having to race everyone on the server for them. The end. Directed and programmed by John Carpenter.

Welcome to your DOOM... AARON A. AARONSON!

Yes, we're talking directly to YOU, Aaron A. Aaronson! This prophecy of your death is coming from INSIDE YOUR OWN COMPUTER! AWOOOOOO!

Hello, everyone else! What you just experienced was a brave new frontier in Halloween scaring technology: personalized terror! Rather than generically scaring all of you a little, from this Halloween forward, we’re going to scare one specific person... TO DEATH! Admittedly, much like the Human Genome Project, this is going to take some time. So everybody be patient - you'll all be scared eventually. Also, if any of you know Aaron B. Aaronson and don't want to deprive him of the thrill of dying of terror next year, don’t tell him about this blog post.

But just because we’re all now living in the amazing far future of scaring, being frightened in ways that until moments ago seemed impossible, that doesn’t mean we don’t have some more traditional Halloween horror planned for you. First of all, we’re happy and scared to announce the Fourth Annual Scream Fortress Halloween update, dedicated to the loving memory to Aaron A. Aaronson. It doesn’t ship until tomorrow, but you can read all the eerie details here.

Secondly, we’re pleased to present the first in our new series of Halloween-themed release notes. It’s a terrifying little tidbit of fearful fact reporting we call “John Carpenter’s Changes to the Functionality of Halloween Gifts”! Last year, gifts spawned publicly and could be claimed by whoever got there first. This year, players will receive private gift spawns that they can grab at their leisure without having to race everyone on the server for them. The end. Directed and programmed by John Carpenter.

<a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/doommates/"><img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/ifightghosts.jpg" width="100%" border="0"></a>

<p>Those of you who follow <a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/comics.php">the private lives of TF2's mercenaries</a> might be aware that Soldier's had an ongoing <a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/bombinomicon/?p=1">roommate</a> <a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/pyromania/soldierhome/">problem</a>. Specifically, his problem is that his roommate is a powerful magician. Things reach their logical, terrifying conclusion in a comic we call... <a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/doommates/">"Doom-Mates!"</a></p><br>

Those of you who follow the private lives of TF2's mercenaries might be aware that Soldier's had an ongoing roommate problem. Specifically, his problem is that his roommate is a powerful magician. Things reach their logical, terrifying conclusion in a comic we call... "Doom-Mates!"

<img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/saxton_sale.jpg" width="100%">

Since 99.9999% of you probably read that title and went directly to the Mann Co. Store, we assume we're now speaking to the three of you who don't believe in reading titles. And now that we've restated the importance of reading the title, we assume those three are gone too. We're essentially talking to ourselves right now, but Valve has a minimum word count for all blog posts that we haven't quite reached yet. Did we mention that items will be anywhere from 25% to 75% off? Well, we have now. Also, the minimum word count is 100 words. Bam!

Since 99.9999% of you probably read that title and went directly to the Mann Co. Store, we assume we're now speaking to the three of you who don't believe in reading titles. And now that we've restated the importance of reading the title, we assume those three are gone too. We're essentially talking to ourselves right now, but Valve has a minimum word count for all blog posts that we haven't quite reached yet. Did we mention that items will be anywhere from 25% to 75% off? Well, we have now. Also, the minimum word count is 100 words. Bam!

New MvM game abandoning rules are now in effect! Read the <a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=8943">blog post</a> for more info.

New MvM game abandoning rules are now in effect! Read the blog post for more info.

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:


Source Engine Changes (TF2, DoD:S, HL2:DM)

• Fixed the "disconnect" command regression from the previous update
  
• Fixed tools like vbsp working with new model format
  
• Fixed a con_logfile ConVar exploit
  

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed a common "FindModel" crash for replays
  
• Fixed the Crafty Hair not using styles for the yellow and brown hair
  
• Improved the "Restore" UI for customizing items in backpack
  
• Fixed floating arrows on carried objects
  
• Mann vs. Machine
  • Added a penalty system to deter players from repeatedly abandoning Mann Up games
    
  • Corrected the respawn time for the Mannslaughter mission
    
  • Updated MissionCycle behavior. Servers will always cycle to a mission listed in the MissionCycle file.

<img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/mvm_tours_blog.jpg" border="0" width="440" height="284">

New Tours!

Much like in <i>Goldilocks and the Three Bears,</i> specifically the part where Goldilocks broke into a bear's house looking for a place to sleep, some of you thought the one Tour of Duty we shipped with Mann vs. Machine was too hard. Others of you found it too soft. A lot of you thought it was <i>just right</i>.

In the fable, of course, Goldilocks held the defenseless bear family at gunpoint until her boyfriend Chet got there, at which point things turned truly grim. This is where our story diverges from that true crime drama, because we've sidestepped the issue by adding more Tours of Duty to MvM mode. Now, in addition to Operation Steel Trap (hard), we've got <b>Operation Oil Spill</b> (less hard) and <b>Operation Gear Grinder</b> (very hard). As Chet might say, "You goddamn bears are in for a lonnnnng night."

New Loot!

In the same way that Goldilocks and Chet drove off covered in bear blood and honey with a flatscreen TV and fourteen dollars in cash, we've cooked up some <b>tour-specific loot</b> you can take to your hideout in Florida. Just like the Botkiller heads awarded to survivors of Operation Steel Trap, we've got some brand new spoils of war you can only get in these new tours: <b>rusty, blood-covered 'bot heads</b> for the intermediate-level Operation Oil Spill, and some <b>24-carat diamond 'bot heads</b> for the expert-level Operation Gear Grinder, so those of you players who survive the tour can show off a little bling to prove it.

(Remember: as always, loot is the <i>only</i> difference between MvM on the unofficial "Boot Camp" server and official "Mann Up" servers. Otherwise the gameplay is identical.)

Improved Matchmaking!
You can now select multiple missions you'd like to play, to maximize the chances of finding compatible players as quickly as possible. We’ve also added some handy buttons that'll let you select all missions of a particular difficulty level, or all missions not yet marked off on a Tour of Duty.

Lastly, like when Chet and Goldilocks beat a retired cop to death in Boca Raton and were sent to separate federal prisons, when your MvM group beat a mission, we used to disband the group. Now we've made it so that when you beat a mission to death in Boca Raton or elsewhere, you and the other players on the server are sent back to the matchmaking screen as a group, so you can keep playing together.