So far, for cryptograghy if that’s what you mean, we’ve either been using the Cryptool series of programs, or like Gunsrequiem was doing at one point, by hand. That’s all I really remember from when I actually tried to crack it and I asked for some help on the tools, but I failed.
And I’m not sure there really has been any noticeable “stages” of the ARG. I’m more like just one long linear go, where ingame clues, IRC clues, and website clues are all mixed between. I supposed if you want to call it now we’re in a sort of “website” stage where the thing that we’re really trying to crack (752 hex file) is from a website.
Actually, he might be on to something, if there is different number of boxes in each level, it could in theory lead to a code or something to be used, as a lot of these pizza boxes where added AFTER the Steam update.
I have some things id’e like to point out on what i found with the games files and some questions.
I went on a search within the games files to look for interesting files. Then i found two audio files within the dm_gasworks. Both of them are the same name but one is an .wav and the other is a .ogg file. The .wav isn’t particular interesting, but the .ogg is. I’m not entirely sure if its just and easter egg or arg related but here it is.
I also went to look at jet.oggs metadata and compared its metadata with the metadata of other .oggs files and the metadata in jet.ogg looks different to the metadata in other .ogg file, so i am wondering if there are possibly hidden audio files within it as well as other files that are hidden in the file as well as the pattern in the spectrograph that i found recently.
The audio files for the EAS thing in office complex are not one single audio file, but is broken up into parts s could someone tell me why?
This is the output of the command [tt]ogginfo -v jet.ogg[/tt]:
[code]Processing file “jet.ogg”…
New logical stream (#1, serial: 000075ca): type vorbis
Vorbis headers parsed for stream 1, information follows…
Version: 0
Vendor: Xiph.Org libVorbis I 20040629 (1.1.0)
Channels: 2
Rate: 44100
Nominal bitrate: 320.000000 kb/s
Upper bitrate: 320.000000 kb/s
Lower bitrate: 320.000000 kb/s
User comments section follows…
Warning: Illegal UTF-8 sequence in comment 0 (stream 1): length marker wrong
ENCODER=Adobe® Audition®
Vorbis stream 1:
Total data length: 831448 bytes
Playback length: 0m:20.741s
Average bitrate: 320.693892 kb/s
Logical stream 1 ended[/code]
There’s an illegal UTF-8 sequence in the “title” metadata field. After ‘title=’, there are only these three characters: 90 01 15 (written here in hex). I found a similar error in bms_sounds_misc_dir.vpk -> sound/music/bms - app2-(crazymix).ogg, but with the following character sequence: 78 D9 61. I haven’t checked every file, so I don’t know if there are more. I’m not sure what this is, but it may just be some non-standard weirdness caused by the Adobe Audition software.
I haven’t tried to break down the jet.ogg file myself to see if there are any foreign blobs of data hidden inside the file, but I guess something would have come up in the output of the ogginfo tool if there were any.
EDIT: I found some more files with these mysterious three-character title fields:
However, I checked the 2012 mod release equivalents of the .ogg files listed above, and the same character values are present in the ID3v1 title tag of their respective mp3 files. So, this isn’t something that’s new in the Steam release.
EDIT2: Man, if only there were seven of these three-character sequences… or did I miss one?
EDIT3: Found three more files with three-character sequences. Updated the table above.
Yes, I did, but I just found three more files with three-character titles that I missed earlier because they had valid UTF-8 code in them: bms - mscl_ambience1.ogg, bms - st1-part1.ogg and bms - st1-part2.ogg. The values in bms - st1-part1.ogg and bms - st1-part2.ogg are identical. I’ll update the table in my previous post.
So, in total, there are 93=27 characters, and not 73=21, which I was hoping for. But if we discard the duplicate one, we have 8*3=24 characters (192 bits). So, this could still be a three-key 3DES key.
Good work flavrans9. I should note that i am currently in a bad mood right now as i might need a new power supply for my desktop gaming PC. I think i broke one of the connectors in it accidentally. Its a modular power supply so i should be able to replace it easily. As a result of this and school i don’t know how often i will post anything new about the arg as often. However, i have another computer that i am speaking to you from right now, a laptop. I do play games on it, but it isn’t a gaming laptop. But i should be able continue to post new information here and play black mesa. Hopefully i can get my main gaming PC fixed very soon.
If there would have been exactly 21 characters, it would have felt more convincing. Nevertheless, those nonsensical three-character track titles are there, and I haven’t been able to come up with a good explanation for them (if anyone can, please do tell). I’m not entirely satisfied with writing it off as something like metadata corruption.
I quicly tried 3DES ECB and CBC (using an IV of 0000000000000000) decryption using the key F8A76578D961405763F06F3DA85138E0812D204C2E900115, but no dice. I ran out of time, and haven’t tried different combinations.
Thanks. I’m sorry about your PC. I hope you get it fixed soon.
I know very little about the Source engine and map editing with Hammer, but wouldn’t splitting the audio up like this use up more entities? And isn’t that something that should be avoided? Also, the way the entities are arranged looks a bit odd. They’re all placed in a straight line, except for one at one of the ends, which is offset to the side, like in an L-shape (sorry, I don’t have a screenshot).
Seeing as how these are ambient_generic entities, I can’t help but think of this passage in the Awesumz document:
Yea, i saw that in hammer too. Very odd. Anyway i have been doing on some research on public key cryptography, Benaloh, and Paillier methods on and off. wish me luck.
You typically split up dialogue sound bits to avoid characters’ visual speaking getting out of sync with the audio (lip de-syncing, as it were) on longer pieces of dialouge. But for something like the EAS message on the radio, with no speaker visually present, unsure of the reasoning.
As for their placements, if they have a source entity specified, in this case they likely would have one with the radio, their position in the map (as far as the game is concerned) wouldn’t matter at all. Whether that means their placement is some sort of ARG-related code remains to be seen, but, I would be doubtful. Certainly placed a lot of weird L-paths for entities myself.
I get the odd feeling we will have something come along to give us a hand soon.
Weird feeling, but it’s there.
In terms of the length of the ARG, I’ve started to look at it this way–even if we don’t solve it within the next few years, maybe I can share the puzzle with my children.
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.
