[ARG] The Pizza Code Mystery

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#3661

My point exactly. We know it is. Most new people have no clue. They come here, see this outdated wiki and nearly 200 pages of discussion, and are expected to be as up-to-date as the rest of us. Rather than an “AHA” moment, they’re more likely to have a long and enduring “WTF” moment, and run away screaming. Thus, avoiding organizing the knowledge we already have basically comes down to turning away new ARG players, and with them possible new clues. In other words, by focusing on what the few people that have been around for much longer know, we’re pretty much ensuring we will stay the few people playing this ARG. That would be rather selfish, wouldn’t it?

I’ve been wondering about if MP can contain ARG hints, but this is the first valid argument I’ve seen for it. Perhaps we should put some more focus on it =)

#3662

Has anyone done a complete analysis of Launch_trailer.mp4 yet? I would like to know. I did do a partial analysis of it using movie maker and found some interesting things that i didn’t know if they where arg related or not. I simply don’t have the programs to completely analyze the video.

Also, could it be possible for the locations of “The Pizza Is A LIE!” graffiti and the bio-dome logos hidden throughout Black Mesa to be important. Perhaps a pattern. There locations scattered throughout Black Mesa are very interesting , strange and fascinating.

#3663

I’ve looked, so far i found no “The Pizza Is A LIE!” graffiti or bio-dome logos or any clues in general, but I’ll keep looking.

#3664

I have no issue with you adjusting the wiki to reflect current data, and in fact I fully support it. I’m already updating the timeline piece by piece and I have a submission form on the blog for possible keys/key phrases. If it is bothering you to leave things the way they are, then I might suggest you put forth some effort to rectify the situation.

EDIT: Just something we may want to keep in mind in terms of keys or key phrases–Satan/Lucifer is considered the “father of lies,” which ties in directly with the Lies.jpg image and the “when you’re building a cage for Satan” quote. Just something to consider . . . . :wink:

#3665

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I thought the only role Lucifer played was to point us in the direction of TripleDES? You mentioned this on page 88:

Either way, I read somewhere that the labs in QE are mislabled, where lab B is labled as D, and C as B or something like that. Has someone tried to move the segments of code ABCD around in a corresponding manner and used it as a key on various unsolved puzzles?

#3666

To be quite frank, Donaldduck8, I’ve pointed out about 100 different things, as have most of the people here–which is the sincerest problem with the current state of the ARG. We have too much information with too few methods to organize it, and everything has boiled down to speculation and little else.

But have faith. I expect that, very soon, things will take a turn for the better ^^

#3667

I’m sorry, in that case I guess I misunderstood you when you said “To be quite frank, I see no point. There’s so much data that even compiling it will still leave a jumble of gunk.” in reply to @Donaldduck8 's suggestion we organize the current data.

I’ve made a wiki account, and I’ll see what I can do, but I’m still not finished with my thesis so it will go slow. I’ll probably start a “new to the ARG?” page, basically a wiki version of this post, and a list of stormseeker’s recent remarks. Then follow that with reworking some old pages (such as the outdated whiteboard theories page) and replacing the contents of the old versions once I think they’re done, because editing the old stuff is probably more work than starting from scratch.

#3668

Please don’t be patronizing. I was referring to the hundreds of things that people have been pointing out that have no relation to the current set of clues and are pointless. We need a timeline of relevant information and data from the current Steam release. Everything else is already catalogued, and those who wish to dig will find it easy to do so via the wiki.

EDIT: My boss caught me trying my hand at pen-and-paper XOR / DES-X prewhitening with the forums pulled up today, and when I explained what I was doing, he flipped shit. Needless to say, I’m not allowed to have the forums pulled up at work anymore–at least not on the work computers. They do put internet on them phone things nowadays, though, so I’m not too stressed out about it.

#3669

Greetings!

I believe I’ve found something quite interesting related to the mystery, but it all relies on the hope that the IP address 84.9.123.155 (as can be found in https://thepizzaisalie.wikia.com/wiki/Tempus_omnia_revelant) still belongs to the guys running this whole thing (Otherwise I may have mildly annoyed some random sys admin), but I’ll post my findings anyway, please tell me to shut up and go away if you think this is the wrong way to go.

So, after a couple of failed attempts to access the IP via a browser I moved on to trying an Nmap scan on it, which initially showed the host was down, but after trying with the -Pn option, it revealed that the host was infact up and had 2 open ports. The ports in question were 554 and 7070, which nmap also told me were rtsp and realserver ports, respectively. I’d never heard of these protocols, but after some usage of my Google-fu I discovered that RTSP is a video streaming protocol which I presumed if I could access somehow, would reveal the next clue in the mystery. Unfortunately, I only made a pretty botched attempt at accessing the server via VLC (rtsp://84.9.123.155:554/).

The wiki page for RTSP if anyone’s interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Time_Streaming_Protocol

The more and more I think about this, the more and more I think it’s a wild goose chase, but it kept me occupied for a couple of hours…

#3670

Hello and welcome,

Several IP addresses were seen in the early part of the ARG. With the exception of the IP addresses used by the websites, all belonged to the same ISP/netblock. These include the IP addresses that were used for posting the IRC clues; IP addresses found inside the IRC clues themselves; and IP addresses from which a couple of anonymous comments on the wiki were posted, which we believe were posted by stormseeker (the ARG’s creator).

However, we know that stormseeker has moved to a new ISP at least once during the ARG:

So, I would guess that anything you may have found on that IP address is probably not ARG related.

#3671

Welcome Professor!

Storm has said more than once previously that “hacking methods are not really within the spirit of the arg” so, it’s safe to assume that hacking sites aren’t part of the ARG.

#3672

Yes, I forgot to mention that in my post, and that includes things like attempting to brute force the SSH login on servers.

EDIT: This is probably one of the things that should be mentioned somewhere on the wiki, perhaps on a “New to the ARG?” page.

Speaking of which, I agree that the wiki needs work, and the quality of it as a whole leaves something to be desired, but wiki editing can be terribly time consuming. I would like to contribute more on the wiki, but right now I am unable to dedicate much time to it. I’ll see what I can do moving forward, but I can’t make any promises.

#3673

Something that could be a reference to the “21 goes into 1” hint and the niobium copy-paste information is the term “periodic.” It happens to be 8 letters, and it obviously refers to the periodic table (the niobium) but also numbers that repeat like the number derived from dividing 1 by 21: 0.047619047619 . . . .

#3674

Interestingly enough - Niobium is used in conjunction with Hafnium, and Titanium to make a superalloy used to withstand the vacuum of space. In fact this superalloy was used on all the Apollo Lunar Modules during the lifespan of the Apollo missions. Sounds like a reference to the rocket launch in HL1.

It may also be worth looking into the isotopes of Niobium. I couldn’t find anything referencing 0476 (etc) with a quick google search. Though, there’s interesting aspect about one of the isotopes of Niobium - Niobium 93. It’s the only STABLE isotope known to man that can undergo spontaneous fission (i.e undergo a self-propelled nuclear reaction, rather than undergoing its entire half-life and decaying). Therefore, I don’t believe that “21 goes into 1” should be taken literally. But rather as “21 pieces go into something only one time”. Perhaps there is an arithmetic relationship - but… I don’t think so personally. Why? Because that’s the obvious answer. However - that doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be something related to it. If it’s anything mathematical - I’d start by doing the math on finding Niobium 93’s Neutrons per fission and Neutrons per gram-second

Another great thing of interest, is the reference to the fact that Niobium is used almost exclusively in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines. Maybe this is indicating that whatever sample Gordon stuck into the reactor of the test chamber c33/a contained Niobium 93. And when it entered the reactor - it underwent spontaneous fission - causing the resonance cascade (yeah that’s a bit of stretch).

Anyways. I don’t follow the ARG anymore. I lost interest so I only input sometimes (thus my focus on Niobium… as it was talked about in the latest post in this thread)

Just some interesting information.

#3675

Anyone noticed this image before? It’s used on the bmrf.us page.

Look closely at the background gradient. Notice that the line for each color transition is a bit blocky.

Here it is with each band changed to alternating blue and yellow so it should be easier to see.

512×512

Looks kind of like a binary sequence, right?

Taking the first line at the very top of the image, assuming blue is 0 and yellow is 1, we end up with exactly 64 bits:
0001101101110110010101111110110000011011000000111000000010111010

or in hex:
1B 76 57 EC 1B 03 80 BA

Interesting, eh?

Well, not really. It doesn’t translate to anything intelligible in ASCII (in fact several characters are outside the safe ASCII range of 0x20 - 0x7F).

Maybe blue should be 1, and yellow should be 0? Let’s see what we get with a bit inversion:

E4 89 A8 13 E4 FC 7F 45

Still not interesting. Once again many fall outside the printable ASCII range and just spells garbage.

I’ve not bothered to check any of the other potential transition lines due to these negative results on the first line, but I thought this was interesting enough to make a note about.

#3676

Isn’t that mesabook.jpg?

I found once and thought it was odd for it to be there.

I am taking a look at the launch trailer for the game and am currently looking at the audio. I’m using sonicvisualizer am i am still figureing out how to use it, but here is a spectrogram i got out of it.

[attach=4068,none,1013][/attach]

The thing that interest me the most is that is the most interesting is towards and at the end.

bandicam 2015-06-23 02-12-49-105.jpg
bandicam 2015-06-23 02-12-49-105.jpg1013×282 123 KB

#3677

Guys found something very interesting in the screen of one of the monitors in QE
File is called Awesumz opened in a Word Pad and says something about crashing Dr. Horn’s Computer.
The guy also is not quite happy about (Black Mesa - Game’s???) Level Designers and he saids he’s a coder

2015-06-23_00002.jpg
2015-06-23_00002.jpg3840×2160 500 KB

#3678

I think that has already been found and concluded that is not connected to ARG.

#3679

Nice find, but we already found it. Just look a couple pages back…

#3680

since this was converted from youtube, i’d assume it is 32KHz resolution

if you have audacity or another program with equalization, you can isolate it. That image doesn’t show where on the spectrum that bit lies on however, so it’s not telling much

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.