Two blog posts in two days? Your eyes don't deceive you. We're blog-writing machines this week, and there's plenty of gas in the tank.



Today's update includes both of the Art Pass Contest Winners' maps: Mountain Lab by Valentin "3Dnj" Levillain, and Mann's Manor by Tim "YM" Johnson and Alex Kreeger.

Also included in this update: You being scared! That's right, it's the Second Annual Team Fortress Halloween Special. Will there be ghosts? Quite possibly. Will there be exploding pumpkins? You never know. Will you wet your pants in terror? If you're anything like us, emphatically yes.



And what more perfect holiday than Halloween to add the scariest feature yet to the Mann Co. Store: Gift wrapping! If someone decides to trick or treat on your server, wrap up that spare bottle of Jarate and give them the gift a thousand words could never describe, and a thousand therapist appointments will never undo.

Also added to the store: new community items themed for Halloween and a few scary hats of our own dark design. Some of these new holiday items are only available to purchase during the holiday, but will remain wearable all year round, so grab 'em while they're grabbable.

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Engine (CS:S, DoD:S, TF2, HL2:DM)

• Removed the rate limit for the "status" command when entered into the server console
  
• Fixed an exploit that allowed people to send fake server messages to clients
  
• Significantly improved engine vertex compression (large reduction in per-model memory usage)
  

Team Fortress 2

• Added TF2Maps.net Art-pass contest winners:
  
  • Mountain Lab
    
  • Mann Manor
    
• Halloween 2010 Event
  
  • Mann Manor is haunted by the Horseless Headless Horsemann.
    
  • Random gift drop in Mann Manor.
    
  • 4 new Halloween achievements.
    
  • Added new Halloween hats.
    
  • Added a new Halloween weapon.
    
• Added Gift Wrapping of gifts to the store.
  
• Added Custom Description tag to the store.
  
• Added the community created "Swamp Theme" assets, so all maps can use it:
  
  • See http://swamp.tf2maps.net/ for full details.
    
• Updated cp_coldfront with the latest changes from the community creator (Icarus):
  
  • Improved visibility on last CP.
    
  • Moved second CP slightly closer to the attacker's side.
    
  • Added cover for players queuing up the health pack on the second CP.
    
  • Improved clipping on the zig-zag ramp to middle CP.
    
  • Teams that capture the middle CP are now awarded with faster spawn times.
    
• Added a health penalty to the Rocket Jumper.
  
• Added the Sticky Jumper for Demomen to practice jumping.
  
• Fixed the Sandvich charge meter.
  
• Fixed glows not drawing correctly when using antialiasing on some computers.
  
• Improved the checks that trigger mp_scrambleteams_auto.
  
• Added console commands to initiate trades directly (cl_trade/cl_trade_steamid) to help people running trading servers
  

We've been fairly busy around the office this week after it was mandated that browsing International Stately Hats of Nationals was not a good use of time and there was work to be done on the next update.

Are you prepared to make your mother proud? We've joined up with <a href="http://www.kritzkast.com/uncensored/">Kritzkast</a> to determine what the Demoman really said during his diatribe in Meet the Demoman. Our sensitive ears are incapable of determining exactly what was said so it's best left to the experts. The funniest clean entry, funniest not so clean entry, and most accurate will all receive prizes. Recording your brother being dominated in Dustbowl is not a valid entry.

<a href="http://store.valvesoftware.com/index.php?t=2&g=7"><img src="http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/stickybombs.jpg" width="420" height="299" border="0"></a>

When you're done yelling into your microphone, check out this fine Sticky Bomb Plush now available in the Valve Store! Available in <a href="http://store.valvesoftware.com/product.php?i=S0225">Red</a> and <a href="http://store.valvesoftware.com/product.php?i=S0239">Blue</a> these are identical to the in-game variety except they're cloth, have fewer spikes, won't stick to surfaces, and can't detonate.

While we're here, we thought we should also mention that <a href="http://mygamingedge.com/">My Gaming Edge</a> has continued working on their <a href="http://mygamingedge.com/mge-mod/">training mod</a> designed around 1v1 play. The first player to 20 points wins the duel, and while changing classes might give you an upper hand it will award your opponent a point. The mod also features several arenas each with different class restrictions, and an ELO rating system to track player statistics. Awesome stuff.

Last of all, the fine gentleman behind the original interactive video, "A Heavy's 2fort Adventure" has released a new video with an even longer title, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS3ANTUOevY">"A Granary Adventure: The Underdog Story" </a>. Watching the Pyro flee brings smiles all around as it reminds us of all the times we've chased down a fleeing Eric Smith in our internal playtests.

We've been fairly busy around the office this week after it was mandated that browsing International Stately Hats of Nationals was not a good use of time and there was work to be done on the next update.

Are you prepared to make your mother proud? We've joined up with Kritzkast to determine what the Demoman really said during his diatribe in Meet the Demoman. Our sensitive ears are incapable of determining exactly what was said so it's best left to the experts. The funniest clean entry, funniest not so clean entry, and most accurate will all receive prizes. Recording your brother being dominated in Dustbowl is not a valid entry.



When you're done yelling into your microphone, check out this fine Sticky Bomb Plush now available in the Valve Store! Available in Red and Blue these are identical to the in-game variety except they're cloth, have fewer spikes, won't stick to surfaces, and can't detonate.

While we're here, we thought we should also mention that My Gaming Edge has continued working on their training mod designed around 1v1 play. The first player to 20 points wins the duel, and while changing classes might give you an upper hand it will award your opponent a point. The mod also features several arenas each with different class restrictions, and an ELO rating system to track player statistics. Awesome stuff.

Last of all, the fine gentleman behind the original interactive video, "A Heavy's 2fort Adventure" has released a new video with an even longer title, "A Granary Adventure: The Underdog Story" . Watching the Pyro flee brings smiles all around as it reminds us of all the times we've chased down a fleeing Eric Smith in our internal playtests.

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Team Fortress 2

• Trading changes
  
  • Added some anti-scam advice to the chat window.
    
  • Increased trading slots to 8 slots per person.
    
  • Added item rarity colors.
    
  • Added the item’s original name to the item description.
    
  • Made most tools tradable.
    
  • Fixed Ellis’ Cap and the Frying Pan not being tradable
    

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed another sentry gun exploit that let Engineers build multiple sentries
  
• Fixed Engineers being able to build level 3 mini-sentries using The Wrangler for real this time
  

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed a sentry gun exploit that let Engineers build multiple sentries
  
• Fixed Engineers being able to build level 3 mini-sentries using The Wrangler
  
• Fixed the Holy Mackerel hit triggering the first blood event in Arena mode
  
• Fixed seeing error particle systems in old demos
  

After days of deliberation, a moderate amount of yelling, and an M&M inexplicably up Drew Wolf's nose again, we're happy to announce the winners of the art pass contest. That's right, winners. Multiple. There were so many good-looking and fun maps that it was incredibly tough to narrow them all down to a single entry. So much so that we didn't bother.

Congratulations to Valentin "3DNJ" Levillain and Timothy "YM" Johnson. <a href="http://tf2maps.net/contests/artpass/winners/">TF2Maps.net</a> has a page up where you can view the winners of the contest, along with many of the other fantastic entries.

<a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=4489&p=1">Read the full blog post here!</a>

After days of deliberation, a moderate amount of yelling, and an M&M inexplicably up Drew Wolf's nose again, we're happy to announce the winners of the art pass contest. That's right, winners. Multiple. There were so many good-looking and fun maps that it was incredibly tough to narrow them all down to a single entry. So much so that we didn't bother.

Congratulations to Valentin "3DNJ" Levillain and Timothy "YM" Johnson. TF2Maps.net has a page up where you can view the winners of the contest, along with many of the other fantastic entries.

Read the full blog post here!

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed server crash caused by a Scout using the Sandman on an enemy Scout who has used Bonk!
  
• Made Ellis' Cap and the Frying Pan tradable
  
• Added "Automatically respawn after loadout changes in respawn zones" option to the Options->Multiplayer->Advanced dialog
  
• Fixed a problem with the Lugermorph model