[ARG] The Pizza Code Mystery

[Pop]

@Pyro

Was there a letter near the CE code, like B or D? Also what’s a CE code?

nope: (hope this image link works)
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/SVbNq0apCMPEQ3BhEHl7MtMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink
Apart from a purple sticky next to it saying 'security desk B3 needs more donuts"

[Pyroclase]

…So, maybe that’s code B, not the complicated stuff we did with the ciphers.

I mean, it can’t be that simple, can it…?

@asm

Does anyone have any idea how to convert that decimal sequence into binary so we can then make it into a file for decryption?

Believe it or not, I actually do, but I’m not sure about how to format it. Should I leave in the line breaks and spaces?

Here’s a first attempt, converting ASCII to binary, which may be wrong.

00110011001100010011010100110010001110010010000000110110001100110011011100110111001101100010000000110010001100010011001000111001001101010010000000110011001100110011001100111001001110010010000000110100...

Edit: Or did you mean the other sequence? I converted the huge block of numbers.

[darkone]

https://home.paulschou.net/tools/xlate/

this might help

[Pyroclase]

Yeah, I’ve been using this:

https://pookey.co.uk/binary.php

[asm]

@darkone

https://home.paulschou.net/tools/xlate/

this might help

That’s the one I used earlier, but it doesn’t seem to work the way we need.

[Pyroclase]

Damnit, Stormseeker! We have no idea what we’re doing here, why don’t you help us out some?

[asm]

@Pyro

Damnit, Stormseeker! We have no idea what we’re doing here, why don’t you help us out some?

It’s no fun if we know what to do from the start, but I agree we should be getting a better sense of direction by now. Maybe we were overestimated because of all the ninjas from Valve’s ARGs.

Anyway, I will try BCD.

EDIT: Or not. I forgot it doesn’t generate some binary sequences. (1011, 1101, 1111…)

[Pyroclase]

It doesn’t generate…

Yeah, I think that this is officially out of my league now, sadly.

[darkone]

something tells me we have this all wrong.

[Pyroclase]

Well, part of it, at least. Bleh. We need to confirm that we have codes B and D first.

[Wristwatch4]

Has anyone tried looking in the desert areas of Surface Tension? we’ve looked at every location on this map in Dr. Horns office except for that area.
Map:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=97211784

[darkone]

2 of the screens on that are from blue shift.

[KyuuGryphon]

@Pyro

Or shoot it with the laser! Or carry it all the way to Lambda core and take it to Xen like that secret hat!

@Hyperbyte

You could slice the pizza with the surgical unit!

Haha, quite true!

All joking aside, of the clues/pizzas we’ve found outside of QE, haven’t they had either the QE lab logo or a wall texture from that chapter with them?

It might be a long shot (and I won’t be surprised if it is), but that kinda suggests to me there might be something else there we haven’t found…

I’m gonna feel dumb when it turns out that basically everything’s in QE :awesome:

[sersoft]

@Pyro

It doesn’t generate…

Yeah, I think that this is officially out of my league now, sadly.

@darkone

something tells me we have this all wrong.

Don’t give up! if I had the brains for it I’d be doing the detective work myself.

[Pyroclase]

Well, you have access to the mod, which I won’t until Friday.

Edit: Speaking of which, someone needs to check out that shed on the cliffside in more detail. I bet that there’s another code there.

[asm]

Ok, let’s review some things:

1. If the cascade ciphering has anything to do with the ARG:

• We already have the message to be decoded by such method, in which case it’s very likely it is the long sequence. In that case, we should look into ways to apply the cascade scheme to it. Since AES, TwoFish, Serpent are modern cryptographic ciphers that operates on binary streams, we should be looking into ways to convert the sequence into it.
• We do not have the encoded message yet. This would probably make more sense since it’s pretty weird to convert the cascaded message into decimal numbers. We would go back to square zero with the long sequence again, however.

1. If the cascade ciphering has nothing to do with the ARG:

• We go back to square zero with the long sequence.

At any rate, since that long sequence is purely decimal, we still need to figure out how to convert it back into letters, unless the message itself is numeric, what I find very unlikely. We probably need more info for that anyway, so we should focus on digging for more clues on what we have.

One thing to keep in mind is that this was probably not developed by the entire BM team (I think they kept it under some tight circle), so we should not get material from all over the project. So far, it seems the clues are concentrated around QE, so we should also focus into that (although I recognize there are other areas with some possible ARG material). Did anyone ever inspect those files closer? We did find Code C there.

[Pyroclase]

But what about the ABCD code? That was strongly implied to be key to the whole puzzle, and we still aren’t sure that we have it all.

[darkone]

what maps haven’t we checked?

also have you checked out side the maps?

[Wristwatch4]

Well, remember that Stormseeker only worked on: Questionable Ethics, Nihilanth, bits of Blast Pit, the Surface Tension cliff vista and Datacore.

[asm]

@Pyro

But what about the ABCD code? That was strongly implied to be key to the whole puzzle, and we still aren’t sure that we have it all.

It could be that the long sequence is the final message (or the end of the “first chapter” of the ARG ) and the ABCD code is the RSA key mentioned in the whiteboard. It could be none of that. That’s why we need more information… :[