Steam News announces the release of a new update for Team Fortress 2, offering some changes and kicking off a Halloween celebration for the teamplay shooter. Here's word: "A Halloween-themed update for Team Fortress 2 is now available free of charge. The Headless headliner of the update is the introduction of the first non-player character in any TF game, the Headless Horsemann. A randomly generated boss monster, the Horsemann appears exclusively in Mann Manor, a new and completely spooky attack/defend map littered with exploding pumpkins. The update also includes new achievements, the opening of the Halloween department of the Mann Co store, new community items from 10 new contributors, and more." Here's the change list.

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