BOO! Halloween 2013!

[Plasma]

Are you scared yet?!! ... No? Well, that's all I've got.
Yes, once again, Valve is back with Scream Fortress to celebrate Halloween with a redesigned map, the Witching Hour skeletons, deadly spells and +100 hats! All these new items come from the depths of the Steam workshop, where armies of flesh-eating zombies design new wearable horrors. Terrifying! ... Not at least a little bit spooked? No? Ah well, I give up.

Well, not completely. Here's what we have planned for this year's Scream Fortress!

Payload #2 will be renamed Halloween 24/7 (same IP!) and will play only Halloween maps. The new map this year is based on plr_hightower, renamed HellTower... [small]and it should keep the name all year long honestly[/small]. The server will be on a fixed mapcycle going through all previous event maps with HellTower every other map to make sure you wizard novices out there can earn all the new achievements and sweet sweet loot.

What about Payload #1, you say? Well, it too will be summoned to HellTower, just not too often. Payload #1 will stick to its regular "you vote for the next map" cycle, but HellTower has been added to the vote options every other map. Want to cast some spells in-between more serious games? Vote for HellTower!

TLDR: Play on the Halloween 24/7 server for non-stop Halloween madness. Play on Payload #1 for your regular programming with a side order of HellTower spellcasting frenzy.

Believe it or not, there's actual lore in TF2, and especially for Halloween events. I haven't really followed the details, BUT you can by following this link to the TF2 blog: http://www.teamfortress.com/bazbobarrabus/ It's something about old ghosts wanting to send each other to hell by pushing explosive carts.

Like last year, special gifts will spawn on HellTower. Each gift is spawned specifically for you and you only can find it. Make sure to hurry up as it despawns rather quickly. Inside you'll find some cool Halloween-themed items!

Please post your suggestions and feedback on the boards, and we hope you guys have a very, very scary Halloween!

Bonus!
For those of you who made it this far, we have a special surprise coming this week. Very soon.

[Plasma]

Feel free to post your feedback regarding this year's Halloween event here!
Have fun everybody!

[chuy409]

When does the event end? I missed today and probably tomorrow also. 

[Plasma]

It should last until Nov 11th. Plenty of time

[Plasma]

As a temporary fix to the server crashes, I've disabled the High-Five action taunt.
If you try equipping the taunt, you'll be killed and respawned in the ready room with the message: "Remove your High-Five Taunt". As soon as Valve releases a fix tomorrow, I'll re-enable the taunt.

[chuy409]

There has been a small update today of 86 megabytes. Is that the issue with the taunt thing? And vaccinator is not working. Ive tried in hyperion, skial and some trade servers and all of them it doesnt let me change resistances.

[Plasma]

Tonight's patch changelog:

- Added new main menu character images for Scream Fortress 2013
- Fixed a server crash related to The High Five taunt
- Fixed neutral pumpkin bombs exploding with blue particles
- Fixed health on hit particle effect precache error
- Fixed client nTextureFrame < 0 warning spew in dev console
- Updated the round restart event to remove spells after playing in hell
- Updated plr_hightower_event to improve server stability
- Updated The Chicken Kiev so it can't be equipped with the Cold War Luchador or the Large Luchador
- Re-enabled the crafting recipes for zombie costumes

Notes missed from Monday's update:
- Updated the Vaccinator to use the reload key to cycle through resist types

That means you can now re-equip your High Five taunt, and hopefully, HellTower is now more stable. We'll have to wait and see though.

[Plasma]

Sigh, unfortunately, HellTower just crashed the Halloween server. I'm going to try to figure out what happened. I'll keep you guys posted.

[chuy409]

No vaccinator fix yet  Im boycotting tf2 until this is fixed

[Plasma]

Looks like Valve still has more bug fixing to do.
At least, you guys can high 5 once again, neat huh!

[Rebral]

What's the map rotation?
Finally beat meras, but lucked out from mono. 

[Plasma]

Current Map Cycle on the Halloween server:

Code: [Select]

plr_hightower_event
koth_harvest_event
plr_hightower_event
cp_manor_event
plr_hightower_event
koth_viaduct_event
plr_hightower_event
koth_lakeside_event

[Rebral]

Current Map Cycle on the Halloween server:

Code: [Select]

plr_hightower_event
koth_harvest_event
plr_hightower_event
cp_manor_event
plr_hightower_event
koth_viaduct_event
plr_hightower_event
koth_lakeside_event

Awesome! The fact that I left right when Viaduct cycled again....   
Now the grind and wait game.

Thank you Plasma! 

[Plasma]

Thursday's Patch Notes:

- Fixed a client crash caused by low detail skeletons
- Fixed a dedicated server crash related to gamestats
- Fixed a dedicated server crash caused by the payload carts getting stuck
- Fixed green zombies not spawning on Linux dedicated servers
- Fixed broken melee animations for some all-class weapons
- Fixed players being able to issue the "boo" command when they are not ghosts
- Fixed cloaked Spies losing their spells if they attempted to cast them while cloaked
- Fixed the stealth spell only lasting for 2 seconds instead of 8 seconds
- Fixed players keeping their spells if they were rolling for them while leaving hell
- Fixed not switching back to the normal weapon if a spell was cast while standing on another spell
- Updated spells so they cannot be deflected

[chuy409]

Still no vaccinator fix. Man whats up with Valve?