Well, the BMRF Twitter account started tweeting again. Seems to be SSTVs. Might be helpful, if related at all.
@BlackMesaRF is posting again. Help needed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/63ano0/blackmesarf_is_posting_again_help_needed/
To be honest, I would and wouldnât believe anything right now. Since there hasnât been any progress, this could be new lead(s), but it also could be someone faking it (happened few times alreadyâŚ) so I would be skeptical at least.
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On the other hand, twitter account you mentioned does have fair number of followers, including official Black Mesa devs account, so thereâs that. I think confirmation would be nice [sub]devs[/size][/sub][sub] pls[/size]âŚ[/sub]
Replied to that reddit post. Hereâs my attempt at converting the fourth wav file to an image: https://imgur.com/a/RBlG5
Looks like itâs just part of an image. Perhaps, if you combine all four SSTV transmission images it will make sense.
As someone who has used that trick, can recommend stitching them together. A single SSTV image doesnât offer much resolution. 
Holy shit I think I may have found something. I did something. Orgasmic Screeching.
i forgot to mention that the first binary image that translated to âdcpinâ appears to reference to usage of a 4 digit code used with ATM cards. Perhaps this is the additional code needed after entering our *21 on the toll free number.
I hope this does go somewhere, would be epic. But, in the past I had contacted this twitter handle, and they responded with they are not part of the arg. This twitter handle I believe is tied to
âgishâ or a Trevor Brennan, a poster on youtube that seems to be the one that put together the old blackmesaresearchfacility.net ARG. youtube.com/watch?v=Ji5A0zh8mq8
A topic was made about one of these accounts last year: Half-Life Universe Twitter ARG?
Meanwhile, a new series of tweets was posted by @forlevensixnine - a user referenced by @BlackMesaRF. Broken up messages referencing songs by the artists whose covers are depicted in the SSTV images. Seems like theyâre trying to emulate the slightly garbled connection SSTV would cause.
Still not sure about the point behind all this. Also not sure about if thereâs any connection to this ARG - the only things so far are the Black Mesa name and the fact that @BlackMesaRF is followed by @BlackMesaDev(s?) on Twitter. The Game Detectives wiki doesnât help much, either.
PS. Trevor Brennanâs ARG was launched in 2010. The YT vid he made about it is from September 2012. The Twitter account @BlackMesaRF was created nearly 2 years later, in August 2014. Not sure how those are linked.
I managed to get a more clear image of the SSTV images via an audio cable connected from the speaker output into the mic input which seems to be the best way.
Link to the images: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7gmfa1RYxFUOWJzYjlyY3ZyUk0
All images seem to have corruption that i donât think was caused by audio distortion on my end so it may be intentional.
Seem to be related to music.
The absolute best way I know of, if youâre curious, is a digital audio cable - basically software that emulates your physical cable which reroutes the signal directly. It cuts out any noise that could be added by a cable, like interference or a bad connector. But compared to a well-working, not overly long physical cable the gain is usually neglible. Personally? I have neither (last I checked, that digital audio cable software ainât free) and used my headset mic in front of a pc speaker with birds tweeting outside.
Anyway - yes, thereâs a relation to music: the first 3 pictures are album covers. Queenâs Queen II, David Bowieâs Aladdin Sane and Elvisâ The Sun Sessions. The messages by @forlevensixnine I mentioned specifically quote Bohemian Rhapsody (from Queen, but not their Queen II album) and⌠Space Oddity, I believe, by David Bowie. The fourth image however? No clue. Pretty sure itâs a picture of earth from space, but I donât see a relation to anything else nor know if itâs also an album cover. I tried googling for related terms and got nothing similar, and reverse image search (even with your clearer copy) also turned up nothing.
Regarding the distortion: it has a nice little square pattern on all the images. None of the SSTV images I find on google have a pattern that âcleanâ - you can see some roughly similar lines, but the discolorment-by-block and top-to-bottom lines are not in any of them. So I agree with your conclusion of probable intentional distortion. I guess one way to figure out just what the distortion is, is by comparing the images with the original covers online. I donât have photoshop (or similar) installed - I guess a comparison would be trivial using the right functions in that. If anyone is interested, feel free to try that.
⌠still though - no clear link to this ARG, for as far as I can see. Perhaps we should continue in that other thread I linked earlier, until a link is found?
I donât see a clear link either however it would still be fun to try and solve. I actually replied to that Reddit thread earlier to mention the same thing in my last post.
I had asked before about the relation of the arg website, and blackmesasource, the reply was that they were not related and that the website âwas the argâ so I assumed that this individual is involved with it.
This might not be related but i thought i should share what i found within the games files about a week ago.
Remember what stormseeker said during the launch day live stream almost two years ago?
The important thing i am talking about is when he talks about the EAS marketing and how they have put it into the game and may put more into later. So far the only EAS put in game is the first one we got around new years of 2014-2015 which is located in the game in Office Complex.
When i was looking through the games files to find the closed caption text file to look for what the overhead VOX is saying i found something rather interesting. Just before the lines for the pre-disaster announcement system there is an unused part called âEAS02â. What this is the second EAS we got closer to the steam release, however i cannot find the audio file for it suggesting that it will implemented later, most likely in the xen update. I think this is what he meant by doing more later. The question is where but i think it will be somewhere in xen.
If anyone wants to see this for yourselves the file is located under Black Mesa/bms/bms_misc_dir.vpk/closecaption_english.txt in the steam version.
You will also need a program that can open the VPK file such as GCFscape.
Although I doubt all this is related to our ARG, at least we can flex our ARG muscles and take a run at it.
Why not, right?
Since there has not been a post in about a month, iâd thought i would share a thought that still bothers me, despite this being discovered two years ago.
Remember the arrays of pizza boxes and âThePiZzaIsALiEâ graffiti discovered in the background maps shortly after the steam release? Well, i donât think we ever solved that and it is not even mentioned on the wiki.
Iâm curious if it is something like code b where we created a composite of four paintings revealing a code. This could be done in the same way, but there may be issues with scaling them to the right aspect.
This would require some sort of image editing software that i do not have and do not know how to use so it would be nice if someone else could try this.
With a little bit of work, you can do this in Excel. The coordinates are on the wiki.
When creating the charts shown in my screenshots, I made sure that both charts were equal in size and that the X and Y axes had equal scales. I tried to move the âarray of pizza lie graffitiâ chart into various positions over the âarray of pizzasâ chart to see if a recognizable pattern would emerge (as you can see in the second attachment), but nothing interesting stood out. Although, I didnât try swapping or inverting the x-y axes, or changing the scales.
Whatâs bothering me is that the number of points add up to 21.
Youâre missing one array of âThePizzaIsALiEâ, the one located in the background map for lambda core located underwater in a pool.
This one.[attach=5402,none,1920][/attach]
Oh, and i got a response from Storm on his steam profile after i thanked him and asked a question.
He says HALOS/752 hex is solvable with everything we have so i think this debunks our wait and see what happens method.
I think all of us were thinking just thatâŚ
That we were going to have to wait and see what happens next.
