Ah I didnt check the models yet, just assumed they’d be textures/decals
Ty 
Yeah, likely just put there by Carlos Montero
Jeez, and how many purple hats are there? I found a different one from the two in those pics.
Edit:
This one, no-clipped in there pre-cascade.
And on the other side of this there’s a monitor scrolling a ton of text that looks fairly readable, but it goes by pretty fast. Looks more copy/pasted from somewhere than anything of actual significance, but you can check it out if you’d like.
there are 3 purple hats? did they finish development in 2008 and have been focused on secrets ever since???
The majority of the text is copied from here it seems: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6495-black-holes-haunt-ghost-particle-theory.html
Also, I see something about Facebook 
IKR?!?! :fffuuu: haha
I’ve been playing around with the three paintings again, trying to flip them around, maybe get a letter out of it, but to no avail. The red one, looking like a B and being the middle of the three is the best we’ve got to go on for now, but its really a stretch. Got a better quality final image out of it at least…
The more I think of this the more certain I am that I’ve encountered something like this before. Unfortunately it was at a relative’s house, where I discovered (and rediscovered) Black Mesa, so I don’t have anything other than my memory on it.
I will be looking up and actively trying to figure this ARG out though, something about it… There is just something about it…
EDIT: Yes, I’m certain I came across something very, very similar to what the Black Mesa Developers are doing. I’m going to try and find it. Unfortunately it may be futile because it was in 2009 and Google has changed the very way they search since then too. I will try though, it’d be nice to participate in an ARG.
Can someone look into the files for the message board? Someone mentioned that you can have textures look different in game than out, and this ‘Message Deleted’ has me intrigued since it’s right before the message telling horn to go to the canteen, which was a hint to the paintings. Maybe the original message had more info which will tell us more about that code. Just an idea.
It’s probably not a clue, probably, but I’m showing a small discrepancy in the number of expected primes in the Bottomley message vs. the number that there actually are.
The Bottomley message is composed of 109 5 digit numbers. Of these numbers, 19 of them are prime. Reading from left to right they are numbers 10,15,23,27,29,46,50,60,65,68,71,75,84,91,93,99,100,103, and 108.
A typical sample of 109 random 5 digit numbers should have an expected 10.386 primes. As there are only 9,592 primes below 100,000 (so each time you have a 9.592 % chance of drawing a prime, then multiply by 109 to see how many you can expect for a random drawing of 109)
Anyway, having about double doesn’t seem too odd, but I had my computer try drawing 109 random 5 digit number samples 10,000 times, and then counted how many had 19 or more. Turns out, [u]there’s only a 0.71% chance of randomly drawing 19 or more primes from a sample of 109[/u] So I think it’s fairly significant, although it definitely isn’t conclusive.
I still have a hunch that the computer screen which has these numbers:
283 + 252 = …
252 - 363 =
252 - 121 =
2548258
Is a clue on how to decode the Dr. Bottomley message. Also, the number 2548258 is 2*1274129, and 1274129 is a very large prime number.
Likely this is all coincidence, but just in case it’s not I wanted to throw it out there in hope in excites anyone else’s mind.
I just realized something. The SSTV code mentions an extension! I recall a scientist asking me the extension to something. I’m honestly am not sure though, but I think it was the “technical office”.
-snip-
Sorry if this has been posted before, I’m in the middle of reading the entire thread.
Don’t we have a Sector C or something earlier in the game?
Technical support. They can all say that at some point I think, it’s one of the default lines that they can say to eachother, one of the random interactions.
Ok, I’m finally back. I have been thinking about the long sequence and how it was poorly randomized and, yeah, I’ve gotten very unoptimistic about decascading it, but I’ll try it anyway. That RSA ideia is interesting, but considering the lack of evidence of any modern encryption, it might be just as far-stretched (remember, the only reference to RSA says a 1024/2048 bit key is required - that’s 128/256 ASCII characters).
I’m thinking the way we should look at the long sequence is by forgetting all the spaces and considering it a stream of numbers. The most frequent number is 9, so we could use it as a reference: does any cipher have a tendency to generate such a pattern?
A neat idea would be to plainly use a checkboard table to convert it into letters (look at this). That coding usually generate lots of repeated numbers since many letters need a prefix (notably, 9). I’ve already tried that, and it doesn’t work with any of the examples from that page. But that could mean we should construct the table in a more specialized fashion, using some important phrase as a mnemonic (“to my sfte”, “dr bon ami”). I’ve tried some forms of that as well, with those examples, but they have repeated letters, which doesn’t agree much with that form of encoding. Anyone willing to try some variations, keep in mind the most frequent numbers: 9, 1, 3 (in that order).
We’ve first assumed it’s a one-time pad because of its format. Does anyone know another numeric cipher that’s commonly used for radio transmissions? Also, I’m betting that the abcd string will somehow be the required key.
I have not seen this elsewhere in this thread…
Behind this door in QE…
https://www.flickr.com/photos/86894266@N05/8004469160/in/photostream
There is this strange looking code…
https://www.flickr.com/photos/86894266@N05/8004466263/in/photostream
(Sure hope these flickr image links work!)
But you should have, this is the same pigpen cipher that gave us Code A.
Duh! My apologies, I missed seeing the picture of it somehow. And, I was all through this thread quite extensively. I don’t know how I missed it.
Darn. I thought I actually found something. :fffuuu:
I don’t think the picture is shown in the thread, but everything blue in the first post is a link, and if you click on where it says “Code A” theres a pic of that same spot. lol
Bit of a stretch, but do you see what I see?..
CE Marking on box, CE symbol on image that is only in the secret cliffside office… 4 digit number… 0682
Edit: Apparently it’s also French in origin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking
“DR” translates into “44 52” in HEX and “68 82” in ASCII DEC / CHAR. It might be “4452” or “6882”.
“dr” translates into “64 72” in HEX, which could be “6472”?
EDIT: This “CE” stuff is reminding me of “Halo Combat Evolved”. The developers of the game have a running joke with the number 7 if that’s any help.
When we have the proper codes this might be a clue on how to scramble them. Since that would also mean we don’t have a C code, we might want to try looking in Sector C…
Do not believe in anything that comes from a pizza. It only tells lies.
Jokes aside, it’s possible, though not more likely than 1404 being also a key.
EDIT: I can’t find a program that supports AES, TwoFish and Serpent that doesn’t operate on entire volumes instead of files. If someone more capable will take over this task, try these files. I’ll still run some analyses on those later.
Here’s something else very odd about the Dr. Bottomley message. We all know what the individual number frequencies look like:
But how about the actual size of the 5 digit numbers themselves? As in, how many fall between 0 and 10000, 10001 and 20000, etc. It looks like this:
Look familiar? I think that’s pretty odd indeed.
Nice observation. The simple explanation is that most most frequent numbers are the starting digit of each sequence. The implication is that there may be a reason for the numbers to be divided that way after all.
EDIT: I think this supports a reference-code scheme. Has anyone checked the bible yet?