i don’t know if its been mentioned, but instead of focusing on the k- identifier of an airport, maybe the elevation number is telling us something, its usually on top of buildings or water towers near airports so the pilot can adjust their altimeter. altimeter settings are constantly being adjusted during flight, constantly changing environmental conditions causes a need for pilots to be in constant contact with airfields, and have their flightplans updated for tracking purposes. but the elevation of a field doesn’t change, so they use it to recalibrate their stuff to match up. As for runway numbers, they are based on 360 degrees, here is a little snippet from online;
Runways are named by a number between 01 and 36, which is generally the magneticazimuth of the runway’s heading in decadegrees. This heading differs from true north by the local magnetic declination. A runway numbered 09 points east (90°), runway 18 is south (180°), runway 27 points west (270°) and runway 36 points to the north (360° rather than 0°).[sup][1][/sup] When taking off from or landing on runway 09, a plane would be heading 90° (east).
A runway can normally be used in both directions, and is named for each direction separately: e.g., “runway 33” in one direction is “runway 15” when used in the other. The two numbers usually differ by 18 (= 180°).
so maybe knowing the field elevation, would point to a specific airport, which would give its location? and maybe some numbers would point to direction of the runways. only mentioning this in case a location is important.
I’ve been about a year and some months off the ARG due to personal matters, and I can’t access my old account, AngelSG because it asked me for a verification code and I don’t even remember which email account I was using. It seems I haven’t lost much because the puzzle is the same and the wiki hasn’t changed that much. Is there any specific information that seems to be on the right track? Has Storm said anything or given more clues? Not that I have much time avalaible, but I’ll give it another shot, what I’m not going to do is try to decode the 752-Code.
By the way, I don’t know if storm would go and set a radio transmitter for the ARG and would keep it running for several years, but there is morse code on 7023.20KHz for real, use LSB-narrow to not get just noise. The problem is it’s in the Netherlands, so I’m not sure if this is a local transmission or it could be from UK or maybe further away.
I don’t think you have missed much. The only things new that seem to have anything to do with the ARG are two things that were found in the Steam release of Black Mesa:
A message found in the metadata of qecode.ogg (Ogg Vorbis version of qecode.mp3, which contained the SSTV transmission with Code C):
// I heard Dr Horn was on the rampage again. I have an awesum idea, I shall yous my lee7
// programming skillz to send him a batch file wat crashes his computer for like 10 mins.
// That will teach him to keep
// telling me to fix things. Stupid level designers overusing the entities in maps, its not like us coders
// dont warn them about the possible repercussions of overusing things like ambient generics
// how were we supposed to know they would lower the limits in the new sdk base...
// I found another of those odd pizza messages again today, i have a feeling its related to whats
// on the board over yonder, im new though, so maybe its something on going. Going to watch Star
// Trek tonight, s04e03 i think. Should give me some ideas for Code.
@Echo off:crash
start
goto crash
There are also various new occurrences of pizza boxes and pizza lie graffitis in the game, some of which are notably weird and peculiar. However, they don’t appear to have any bearing on the puzzle.
There’s also the “21 goes into 1” hint, but maybe you already knew about that one.
Most of (if not everything) Storm has said regarding the ARG should be up on Stormseeker’s wiki page, except for a transcription of what he said in a livestream hosted by lambdageneration. @Pianownd did his best and posted his transcription of it here, but the audio quality wasn’t the best, and some of what Storm said was inaudible or difficult to make out clearly. As a result, there are some holes and some uncertainty as to what he said exactly. There were some dispute/discussion in the thread over this passage:
Some believed that this meant that there are clues out there that we haven’t found yet. Others believed that it simply meant that we haven’t found the solution yet because we haven’t been able figure out the clues we already have and know about. The relevant section of the livestream is available via this link.
As for the kxbm.net/localdesertsingles.com sites, we still have no confirmation whether the sites were related to The Pizza Code Mystery, or just made to promote or generate hype for the Steam release of Black Mesa. Both domains expired in February this year. kxbm.net was renewed, but localdesertsingles.com was not. In in March, the localdesertsingles.com domain was completely gone, but now it appears that it has been grabbed by domain sharks.
A while back I discovered who had made the kxbm.net/localdesertsingles.com sites. On his homepage there’s a link to his github account. It turned out that the original source code for both these sites had been available on his github account since before the sites went live. All the work that went into deobfuscating the JavaScript code and to figure out how the morse code was encoded had been a complete waste of time since the original deobfuscated code had been available online all this time. Even his design notes for the sites can be found there. However, apart from some interesting and weird commit messages, there doesn’t seem to be anything there that can help us solve the HALOS file.
Recently, we’ve been checking out the recent STU Update (Content Update 0.3.0) to see if there’s anything new in the game that might be ARG-related, but so far nothing solid has been found, except for more pizza boxes and pizza lie graffiti.
Thank you for the info! The password to HALOS’ or Dr. Horn’s area, the way it’s written could be any of the two, is “those two cryptographer peoples”, so BENALLOHPAILLIER is the password, but not for the hex code we have. About the second message, it says at the end goto crash, maybe it’s just a reference to the batch file that crashes the computer that he’s talking about, but who knows.
About what he said on the interview, I’m assuming everyone caught up on this “We’ve got the EAS marketing [?]…” so the EAS video was just marketing. “But the key is to keep looking for clues in the game, and you’ll come across all kinds of little nuggets of information…” So look in the game is the key, maybe literally the key we need for the code is in the game. “…on the Cliffside map which is another one of my maps, one of the ones I’m most proud of.” On Cliffside map probably, he seems to point there more than QE or the other maps. But since this is an interview, maybe the information does not concern the current puzzle and the clue we’re missing is elsewhere. Regarding the 752 hex code, I still think it’s AES but we need to find some clear indication that we have the password, else it’s just infuriating to check.
Just to note, the question mark after “EAS marketing” comes from @Jake R´s transcription. He had it transcribed as “EAS mark [?]”, but I’m pretty sure Storm said “EAS marketing”. If you want, you can listen to the original interview yourself. Unfortunately, the full livestream is no longer available online, but @Wristwatch4 put up a video with snippets from it where Storm talked about the ARG: youtu.be/o0FWvepK2qY
He does say marketing. Also, he stressed “in the game” in "“But the key is to keep looking for clues in the game, and you’ll come across all kinds of little nuggets of information…” So there’s at least something we haven’t found.
Cascaded ciphers seem improbable, but maybe he went the extra-extra-mile of difficulty, instead of just the extra-mile, in any case we need the password first.
Actually, I’m thinking more along the lines of finding the right cipher near a cascade, or something like that. Not a literal but a figurative “cascade cipher”.
If I remember correctly, when you type in console map c2a4e (example), you will start at map beginning, but without any equipment or weapons. This also includes HEV suit, so that could be the reason when there is no armor display.
Hic est anima mea = This is my soul (or spirit, or life).
Do you have a link to where you found those screenshots? We need to confirm this. Maybe it’s not from the game proper, it could be from a mod or something.
Bro, i took the pictures. xD
And no i really don’t know where is that text located
One thing i could do is go play the BM again, since there are no new screenshots after the Latin text pictures.
Perhaps i could find it.
One thing I noticed is that the HUD doesn’t look like the one in the Steam release of BM (font and icons are slightly different). It looks more like the HUD in the 2012 mod release.
EDIT: The date in the filename of your screenshots—2015-12-30. That was the day when the Hazard Course mod was released.
My recent post of the Latin text was found in the Hazard Course mod, not in the official Black Mesa game,
therefore it is not involved with the ARG Pizza code Mystery.
Well, that little detour was fascinating for all of about 15 minutes.
And now, back to the ARG.
Seriously, Storm has us chasing our tails looking for some obscure, hidden clue as to 1. which method to use to decipher the HALOS text, and 2. what key(s)/code(s)/passphrase(s) is/are needed to do so. Is the solution in Dr. Horn’s Cliffside shack? Is it in QE? Is it part of the new STU levels? The game has grown so big, we have to find a needle in a mountain-sized haystack.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.
