[ARG] The Pizza Code Mystery

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#3181

I’m guessing it’s just horrible, horrible jpg compression artifacts. There’s so little data other than black pixels there, the compression defaulted it all to pretty much just black. If you zoom in, you’ll see the same happening to shirt in the area between “lies steals it eats it” and “Dr. Stone will pay”. Both areas stand out if you mess with the levels in Photoshop, as they do not seem to contain any red / blue / green, just black and white. As for the top right corner: there doesn’t seem to be anything useful in there, except what looks like an exclamation mark to the right of the S (which is just barely visible in the original picture).

I could be wrong, of course. Feel free to check for yourselves.

#3182

Got this comment on the blog via the submissions page back in January and just found it today:

"Hello, only just stumbled upon this whole ARG thing tonight and managed to work my way through to the HALOS.txt point at which all seem stuck.
I understand that ALL of which has been done would’ve been absolutely way beyond my thinking but just wonder if maybe it’s possible the filename (HALOS) is just simply suggesting the text could be copy/pasted into a file for a Linux system, whether it be the equivalent of an exe file or some form of image? And if it were to be as an image, perhaps the pizza image file could be ‘placed’ over the top of it to reveal the relevant pieces, as it were?

I’m almost 100% sure this will be utterly incorrect and way beneath the level of thought required but thought on the off-chance that everyone who has seen to this point thus far were on that plane way above that of my own then it’s arguably possible something far simpler was overlooked.

Good luck, and hope I one day see someone cracked this!

@Mister_TIBS"

The “@Mister_TIBS” returns this: https://twitter.com/jorchet/status/553313681665433600

Probably just one of the users (anyone wanna claim it?), but you never know. It’s the only one I’ve ever received via the submissions form.

I tried converting the file before without any success, but it’s entirely possible there’s another way I’m not familiar with. Any thoughts?

#3183

It’s not exactly what you’re talking about, but a little while back I tried using the hex code of HALOS as HTML colour values (there’s 4 missing hex digits for it to fit evenly, so I just left them as 0’s on the last colour).

If you do that, it fits evenly into a 21x6 image.

It’s almost certainly just a coincidence, considering to my knowledge there’s no real way to do anything with that image, but here it is if anyone has any ideas.
halos.png
(sorry about the vertical stretch, not sure why that’s happening)

#3184

The problem with it being any kind of file is that there are so many different file types out there, its very difficult/time-consuming to determine which one it uses.

#3185

That is just Error 404 message, nothing more.

#3186

Damn, this thread really lost traction, huh. Well, heres a little something to wake it up https://www.blackmesasource.com/ . Rise and shine, everyone.

Edit: in the page source, the video is called ‘unforseen consequences video’

#3187

Now that you mention UC, that beeping reminds me of the old alarm sound in HL
youtube.com/watch?v=7pg-JQyrPLw … but maybe just my imagination

#3188

From looking at the html, it appears that it is one video that loops. The name of the file is 3.mp4, if that means anything.

Edit:Since the html calls the video “unforeseen consequences”, perhaps it could be telling us to look in the unforeseen consequences level? I’m pretty sure we have looked before, but mabye we missed something?

#3189

InB4HL3confirmed

#3190

I’m looking for any changes on ARG related web sites, but nothing so far. Although gman.blackmesasource.com is no longer working.

#3191

Man, I just love that distortion effect. Would be nice to know how to replicate it in a shader or something.

Ontopic: Anyone know what the numbers could mean? I would say date if 13 and 32 were numbers that actually appeared on calendars.
NOFORN is a term for “No Foreign Nationals”, so that would indicate it’s a military or government classified transmission.
Then again, that could just be standard procedure for that frequency as broadcasted by the BMRF.

#3192

It’s a countdown. The tv links to a countdown.

4 days 13 hours 24 minutes?

#3193

Wait, what? The timer’s at 4:15:12 for me…

#3194

It’s changing because it’s counting by minutes.

[/size]
[align=center][/size][/align]
[/size]
tempus omnia revelant[/size]
[/size]

[/size]

#3195

No, I mean the hour count is different. Both you and Skuros have it at 13, while mine’s at 15. ?(

#3196

It probably works off your computer’s time, I’m guessing. So the minutes are right, but the hour’s off depending on time zone.

So the question is, what time zone is this counting down for?

#3197

It’ll probably end at 8:47, like the counter did back in 2012… I could be wrong, but I think that’s UTC-9. It’s a “Military Time Zone” (whatever that means), and its designation is Victor.

Victor… V for Valve? :stuck_out_tongue:

EDIT: Actually, wait, no… That still doesn’t explain why the hours are different. If it’s supposed to be “locally” counting down to 8:47, then it’s off by two hours for me (PST). I’m confused again. ?(

#3198

Varying times for download availability for the MP?

#3199

Half Life 3.mp4 confirmed? But in all seriousness that probably means there are 2 videos that take place before it. The one found on https://kxbm.net/ is probably the first, so where is the second one? Also the video links back to this site: https://www.bmrf.us/?
It displays a date which is calculated in this script: https://www.bmrf.us/assets/jquery.countdown.js
I don’t code JavaScript/Jquery so not entirely sure what it means.

Edit: Figured it out (quite simple now that I look at it). The numbers are “week/day/hour” until the week become “00”. Then it becomes “day/hour/minutes”. It continues to countdown until it reach “eventDate”.

#3200

/-----------------------------------------------------/
/----------------------- Timer -----------------------/
/-----------------------------------------------------/

$(’.fadein’).fadeIn(500);
$(".glitch-time").countdown({
date: “5 may 2015 10:47:00”
});

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.