[ARG] The Pizza Code Mystery

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#4926

I know, but storm wrote it like that under handy info when he updated the OP. He wrote at least the greyed out “Tempus omnia revelant”, near the top, confirming the TOR page was written by him, and this:

Handy Info

  • Halos
  • BenallohPaillier
  • CongratulationsyouwonthePIZZA
  • BMRF.us (site down, due to unforseen circumstances)

STORYLINE SO FAR

??? (You’ll have to write this yourselves - It might help…)

NB - This will not lead to Xen being released early.
This will not lead to a release date for HL3.
Attempts to hack anything will lead to me closing this down, it is not within the spirit of the game.

Maybe he misspelled it, but it was mentioned way, way back, when it would be safe to assume that he was reading the thread, and he never corrected it, so maybe it was intentional.

#4927

Can you be more specific? I went back in-game, enabled/disabled sv_cheats while looking around in the QE maps, but I didn’t see the error messages you are describing. I did get some error messages in the console, but I think those came regardless of whether sv_cheats were enabled or not, and they didn’t seem to have anything to do with items changing place.

I’d say it’s just a bug or something. But who knows. Maybe something could have been hidden in a difficult to reach place and made to disappear if you enable sv_cheats.

“Use” the keyboard in front of that monitor, and something should happen…

I tried this in Cryptool 2.0, but… nothing…

As for rabbit holes, Storm made that statement in a post only days before Black Mesa was released on Steam EA, which was about 2 1/2 years after we received the HALOS code. There’s nothing in the clues that seems to have anything to do with rabbits or rabbit holes.

There are 3008 bits in the code. Factorization of 3008 is: 2[sup]6[/sup] × 47. Assuming no bits are missing in the code, the only code sizes that are possible are: 1, 2, 4, 8, … up to 64.

If the code was something like 3040 bits long, which is divisible by 5, it might have been interesting to try and decode it as baudot code, and maybe the next step would have been a classical cipher. But I’m not sure if the entropy would have been as high as it is in the HALOS code.

How? The program might crash, hang or slow down your computer, but it shouldn’t crash your computer. That usually only happens due to instability caused by faulty or failing hardware or overclocking, or a buggy driver.

CSM = Cascade Shadow Maps — a technique/algorithm for rendering high quality dynamic shadows in real time. It was added to the engine for the STU update. See Surface Tension Uncut and Cascade Shadow Maps!

#4928

I don’t know anything about music, so please, a little feed back would be appreciated, I may have had an aha moment…

this unlocks at the start of the end. what is needed to unlock something… A KEY… so start of the end. E, so a key of E

where does a clock, key of E, and benalohpaillier resemble? big ben, parliament. benalohpaillier was meant to remind wasn’t it? or at least something was thought of to “remind” him.

Big Ben, chimes in the key of E . 21 goes into 1, could just mean a clock face. what could be done with the key of e, I think its efgabcde or something like that. could this be used in some way to re order the hex code?

also there are a lot of articles, poems and books with many referring to big ben and the voice of god. there is also a plaque on big ben that is religious in nature

#4929

I haven’t got problems with anything else. The hardware is quite old, seven years iirc, but aside from an exploding PSU a couple years back, everything runs smoothly, no crashes or slowdowns of any kind aside from cryptools giving BSOD, so it has to be something related to cryptools crashing the computer.

There’s the T-function of stream ciphers, called triangular under certain circunstances, which is kind of related to the grilled pizza since it was triangular. The Tempus Omnia Relevant is related to time, and stream ciphers are an approximation of one-time pads, and the lenght of the code itself, it the block size is not 64bits, it either has an incomplete block or is a stream cipher. It could be other stream cipher, or what I think is more likely, an incomplete block cipher, since storm said people was close, but who knows.

The entropy could be quite high, not sure how much, at least for a short text, since the message would not be read from the code itself, but from the image the dots form. Each column could encode more than one line, then the code would seem random, for a word or two at least, which is what could be encoded this way in 3008 bits. With no repeating letters, or letters that are repeated represented in two different ways (eg. one capital one not) it could be feasible to have high entropy code, what I’m not sure about is how high. About the length not being divisible, I realized after I tried, that’s why I went to the IBM360 system which uses 4 hex digits for each column, so 188 columns with 16bits each.

Well, Tempo is the speed at which music is played, so Tempus could point towards there too, but the code is too random to be a music sheet. But how does 21 goes into 1 mean a clock face?

#4930

there is a clock in game stopped at 10:12 , also one stopped at 9:01 somewhere.reading the first number counter cw gives us 21 into 01, the second clock is also 21 into 01 at night read cw. As for a tempo, I was thinking of rearranging the blocks around based on the order of letters so it would match the scale and frequency of the bells at the big ben parliament palace area. Also something else hit me. Could there be a place where a sensor or even a camera could be that we could communicate a kind of code via a flashlight? Like a heliograph? Also, there are a number of notes played at different times, its known as the Cambridge quarters

a couple of things I want to add that I’m still wondering about and think it could be important as well. the first video is taken from questionable ethics.
its a console that is different from every other console in game, even with different sound effects. once the button is pressed, it seems like its waiting for an action or possibly a code to be punched in before it times out. Also, the text scrolling on the monitor, I cant make any of it out and I’m wondering what it may say, I think I can see it saying to read xxxx is there a way of pulling up that info that is blurred on the monitor?
youtube.com/watch?v=tZM0Uqf7emQ

the second video, I have posted before, its about a strange audio ticking noise. something funny about this. I was watching Crimson Tide the other night, a movie about a sub. and that exact same noise can be heard in the sub near the sonar station. No idea what it means, nor how I can look it up. maybe someone on here was a sailor? and might be able to identify it?
youtube.com/watch?v=vDXTT88AVfU

#4931

one last thing, I wanted to put this here, because I thought I had looked through the files before and I didn’t find anything like this, maybe its been there all along, but I just don’t remember seeing it. its an rsa key found in the black mesa files

30819D300D06092A864886F70D010101050003818B0030818702818100C479FF8BE7AC6AB7B48591495083324A67D43F8F418725823B673C7EC2717F2F8B9EDC1D1A9FDC39A6D44996D779BE716D059586AD74FA8ABEF57CE17AB515B916DEC95046C74F…

its under trusted key, probably old news?

#4932

If the sound in the movie is exactly the same then it is a stock sound, it sounds like the sound a printing machine or fax would make. The key though, is 1276 bits long, that’s not normal for a RSA key, is it? Maybe I’m missing something and it has a checksum padded to it or something.

#4933

the audio noise was the same in the movie, but it was not the same pattern. We’ll if that’s not an rsa key, then perhaps it’s a hint. The file is in the black mesa file as a text file

#4934

It’s the public key of the RSA key the devs used for signing the official .VPK files. The public key can be used to verify the signature and thus verify that the content is authentic and official. I’m not 100% sure on this, but I think the trusted_keys file is used (or can be used) by MP servers to verify that the players are using trusted (official) content that matches the content on the server. This is to prevent cheating by using modded content.

It’s an ASN.1 DER encoded RSA public key. The key is 1024 bits. The size of the key is determined by the size of the modulus n. The public key consists of the modulus n and the public key exponent e. Then there will be some additional bytes which is overhead coming from the ASN.1 DER encoding.

#4935

That PDF had a cipher example that used the keyword “IMAGINEIMAGINEIMAGINE”.

…Hmm… Lists…

DS9’s s4e3 is “The Visitor”, not “Hippocratic Oath”. The “first” episode of that season aired as a two-parter.

#4936

plot twist… HAiOS…

Possible it’s supposed to be an i???

Fun fact. A pi, is a principal investigator, sometimes quite evil, and on occasion head of the lab, but mostly evil from what I’ve read, and I believe they have a say where funding is allocated, what if the pi is a liar?

#4937

This is a huge step forward I believe. I’m either right on the money, or just a hair off. I had to hand jam it so it looks a little sloppy. ( I know fk all about programming)
a scrip would have been a lot faster. This is taking a clock, getting rid of the problem with 12 being 2400 or 1200. as you can see, 21 goes into 1.

This is in the shape of a helix, if it was to be stood up. Using a clock to align everything. its a flat left to right way to illustrate a helix. RED lettering is the 752 code proper, and BLACK is in reverse intertwined. I have run this through a few translators, and A LOT of words show up. Help me finish it!

oh yeah one other thing that I want to share. its money. The terminal black mesa page, where it talks about this being a conundrum and together we can crack this. in caps, there is DRHORN. but when you inspect source, you see that is says DORN

I think cpu had mentioned it before. anyhow. I don’t think its dorn. I think its supposed to be NORD. So I’m thinking there should be some Nordic translations. also to go along with this. On C horns google + page, he has a link to youtube. and only ONE link. its for a band called POETS OF THE FALL. Which are from northern Europe and was voted, best Nordic band at one point. so that’s 2 hits for norse…

Edit: will rework it with each helix starting at different positions on the clock, if someone is able to write a quick scrip that could do it, that would really help with the speed of things…

the goods.jpg
the goods.jpg1958×1662 759 KB

TEXT IN ORDER FWD BK.txt (5.89 KB)

#4938

Hey Drgibbles. can you explain the process. This is just flying over my head bud. Maybe i can help you do it by hand.

#4939

sure. Through black mesa, we’re finding pizzas next to biodome logos with a helix. Saw a pic of one sideways. So I started looking online how a helix could be written out in 2d left to right like the pic I saw. After looking through some stuff I found these… there have been a lot of hints in game as well showing things backwards and forwards. So to have a helix strand that looks like the biodome helix, I put the 752 code as one pattern like the images below, then added the second pattern to tie to the first. One of the images looked just like an image on an airfield in game. Instead of starting the patterns at the 1o’clock and 7 o’clock position maybe starting them at different clock positions will help. Looking at the biodome floor map, the letters are jumbled, which would also make sense with the pictures of the 2 arrows in the pic here. Also in the 13 frames I made. Only 1 clock is needed, so thing of it as just 1 long string from left to right. Think of it as the 2 through 13 clocks aren’t there. I couldn’t make 1 big connected string so I had to chop it up. The clocks 2 through. 13 are just there so I could keep it lined up correctlyspirals.jpgtmp.jpgDiagram-of-Left-Hand-Helix-Curve.pngDiagram-Showing-Construction-of-Right-Hand-Helix-Curve.pngAccurate-Diagram-for-Helical-Spring-of-Round-Wire.pngfig026.150.png

.

#4940

I don’t understand anything. How do you assign letters to the positions? I can’t wrap my head around how to use the spirals in relation to the 752-code, even with the further explanation.

Also I found this:

https://hzyuanxing.com/home.php?mod=space&uid=2934&do=blog&id=61739

I don’t know why, but there’s one of my old comments in this forum, or whatever that page is. One of my old comments translated to Norwegian, on a Chinese webpage, mixed with a levitra ad. I’ll copy here the relevant part so you don’t have to click the link.

“Jag läste tråden från November 2012 till mars 2013, eftersom aparently, lösningen var nära på dessa månader, och jag såg hans namn, och komma ihåg att någon sa att ‘söka kod out’ kan vara en hänvisning till code_ i IRC, som gick 0418_08151814 i forumen. Så jag kollade namnet,Köpa Levitra, han hävdar att han är expert på ARGumenten, men han har inte tid att hjälpa, fortfarande, loggar han ganska ofta bara för att läsa, eftersom han inte har skrivit under ett år.”

An automatic translation:

“I read the thread from November 2012 to March 2013, since apparently, the solution was near on these months, and I saw his names, and remember that someone said that “to apply for code out” can to last a reference to code _ in IRC, that went 0418_08151814 in the forums. So I checked the name,Buy Levitra, he asserts that he is competent on THE ARGUMENTS, but he does not have time to help, still, logs he quite often only in order to read, since he has not typed during a year.”

Now the original, just the paragraph from where that message is copied:

“Very clever Mr. 0418_08151814, or should I say… MR BOND!, no, wait… MR HORN! I’ll explain 04=d 18=r _ 08=h 15=o 18=r 14=n. Just the positions of the letters in the alphabet. I was reading the thread from November 2012 till March 2013, because aparently, the solution was close on those months, and I saw his name, and remembered that somebody said that “seek code out” might be a reference to code_ in IRC, who went by 0418_08151814 in the forums… So I checked the name, he claims that he’s an expert on ARGs, but he doesn’t have time to help, still, he logs on pretty frequently just to read, since he hasn’t posted in one year. It’s also quite peculiar that in the wiki dr. horn was the one who created the storyline page the same day he had created the Tempus omnia revelant one, and just some days after 0418_08151814 suggested to write the story. I was tempted to send him a private message before posting this, asking for advice, since 0418_08151814 stated that he has experience on ARGs, but I thought that doing it would be against the spirit of the ARG.”

I could understand a bot nicking things from forums, but nicking just one part of a post, translating it to Norwegian and mixing it with ads… I don’t know, maybe the internet is weirder than I thought. By the way, they should just have kept the Bond joke, it’s not ok to say it myself, but it was a good joke.

Also, on reddit.com/r/ARG, about a year ago, somebody posted messages pointing towards terminal.blackmesasource.com, using 0418_08151814 as a nickname, here: https://www.reddit.com/user/0418_08151814

I don’t know what to make of this, the message on reddit could be storm or somebody else trying to bring new people since this is pretty much dead, and the message on the Chinese forum… Maybe it’s just a bot and has nothing to do with the ARG, but seems so strange… :S

#4941

Can’t see … captain.

#4942

So wait. You modified the code by eliminating the letters, then turned the numbers, presumably two or four characters at a time to HEX, then you run the HEX through a base 64 enconder and then through “entire ROT series”… How is this the decoded message? It looks like any random base 64 encoded message, some “chunks” of words appear randomly, as in any string made or random letters. Also, what does it have to do with spirals.
EDIT: About this account thatTHEButterFingerBatMan[/size][/size][/size] brought up some months ago:

https://twitter.com/BlackMesaRF

It’s an account supposedly made by the Black Mesa Research Facility PR team (the “real” Black Mesa PR team, not the Black Mesa game devs PR team) managed by D. Wallace Breen and at least somebody else who goes by the initials “lm”. There’s a bunch of repeated twits, about fires in sector L. and what not. Here is the thing, the account has been twitting, and twitting again and again, despite it not having followers, so as a joke it would make little sense. They even made a subreddit and hold an AMA by D. W. Breen himself, where somebody asked him about HALOS and he said he did not knew about that.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackMesaPR

Another thing that’s interesting is twits that just say “Viewing”, and “Observing”, so this might be some additional clue. The “watcher” that is watching from the shadows might be Dr. Breen, that is, if this account is ARG related.

There’s also this: “PREPARING314” and a series of twits that are supposedly interrupted, in the same fashion than the HALOS.txt message or some IRC clues:
“Biological contaminant det-----…A…W…S…N…E…A…R…”
"Signal interruption detecxxxxxxxxxxx
“xxxxxxxxxxxxessagefromIsxxxxxxxxxeinexxxxxxxxxdonoxxxxxestsampxxxxxg388xxxxxxxxxxysixtexxxxxxxeaseresponxxxxxxxx”
“xxxxxxxreyoxxxxxxxxxrecixxxxxngusxxxxxxxxxonottxxxxxxxxxmpletomoxxxxxxxxxx”
"xxxxxxxxxxxxxgnal control restored.

Other interesting twits: “signalinterrupted”; “prepareforunforseenconsequences”; “QGNvbnhhY3Q=”; this last one is base64 and decodes to “@conxact”, which is another twitter account:

https://twitter.com/conxact

Which somebody on twitter claimed was part of a HL3 ARG. So it could perfectly be another ARG, I don’t know.

#4943

@drgibbles
I don’t understand, you said that it’s done, yet nothing can be read from the text files your provided.
The HALOS file is suppose to be a text of some kind, your lines make no sense.

#4944

I will have the solution up today. Within 24 hours from right now.
Starting 7:25am central u.s. time. June 28th 2016.

If solution isn’t up by 29 june2016 7:25 AM u.s. central time. Mods please ban me mainly for being a complete idiot and also for irritating everyone here. Just 24 hours is all I ask

#4945

Considering most of the guys on this project where in England, which is where storm lives. It’s the 29th already.

I made a whoops on the DS9 series, I assumed it just mean episode number regulardless of when or how it was aired.

EDIT!
Also Angel Prepairing314. 314 the first 3 digits of Pi, Pi equals pizza. Also there seem to be a bunch of straws I am grasping at who would have though!

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.