I could just see this professor Dorn, the alchemist, going all primeval on some headcrabs in the old lab with his trusty crowbar, spilling radium all over…
I got around to trying to gib the stuff today. Nothing turned up in all the places I checked.
In IE9, next to the URL is a little icon. When I posted that I was on a Macintosh computer with safari, so due to the way Macs work I accidentaly grabbed the URL in the URL bar. The little, little picture moved with it and it turned out that some parts of it were transparent rather than white.
Ï’ve been thinking of all this, about the Philosopher’s Stone sometimes being orange and glass-like, like our Xen crystals, and now with a Dorn alchemist, there might be something hidden in the test chamber, or it’s a nod to the last code being in the Xen chapters he worked on.
Also, I checked out that secret shack by myself, and those blueprints on the TV in the corner looked very much like the testchamber to me, which gives us more reason to look around in that chapter.
Didn’t see a post here, but Rocketjumper created a Wiki page about this ARG (but it needs to be updated by us users):
https://thepizzaisalie.wikia.com/wiki/The_Pizza_Code_Mystery_ARG_Wiki
Feel free to grab all the textures etc. from the FTP and upload them there (Wiki is probably more accessable to people)
ftp://ev1te.myftp.org/BMS-ARG/
Something I noticed when browsing through the BMS files. All the files related to the ARG were last modified in January/February of this year.
Code B overlays:
qe_canvas_painting_#.vtf: 1/30/2012
VIC whiteboard:
c2a4x_labboard1.vtf: 2/2/2012
Code C audio:
qecode.mp3 2/3/2012
Code A texture:
qe_pigpen_decal.vtf: 2/24/2012
Checking the folders for files modified around these dates may help narrow things down. Also, I think this rules out the BMS release date as part of the VIC cipher, since the texture that contains the code was already added in their repository 7 months before they announced a release date.
I searched in Windows explorer with this term: “datemodified:01-Jan-12 … 29-Feb-12”. That searches for all files modified in January and February of this year.
Unfortunately, 3,605 items came up. It’s kinda hard to get anything useful from such a large number of files.
I also searched for “pizza” and these files were found:
grd_pizzaguy01.vcd
grd02_pizzaguy01.wav
pizza_box.dx80.vtx
pizza_box.dx90.vtx
pizza_box.mdl
pizza_box.phy
pizza_box.sw.vtx
pizza_box.vvd
pizza.vmt
pizza.vtf
c2a4x_pizzalie_graffiti.vmt
c2a4x_pizzalie_graffiti.vtf
qe_pigpen_decal may have been added earlier with the other files, but changed later for some reason. Searching around that original week may narrow down results a bit. And also only check for assets like vtf, wav, mp3.
One thing I’ve found that seems out of place is this:
This is post_board04.vtf. It was last modified on 1/26/2012. All the other poster board textures were last changed in 2010. So for some reason they changed something about it later.
There’s a code in the top right hand corner, but it’s hard to make it.
Also, could there be any significance to the green face? I think I’ve seen that somewhere before, but I’m not sure what it means.
I searched in the week of Monday 30 January to Sunday 5 February. There are still 112 .vtf files with names such as “crosshair_357.vtf” or “damage_fall.vtf” - in other words, normal game files.
There are 1,206 .wav files (all kinds of normal stuff), and 33 .mp3 files, namely the whole soundtrack and qecode.mp3.
I read somewhere that qecode.mp3 had “Dr Horn” as a “contributing artist” or something like that, but in my version of Black Mesa all the properties such as “artist” are empty. Why is that?
I have Dr Horn as artist in my qecode.mp3
I also searched all audiofiles for artist name containing “Horn” and only qecode.mp3 showed up.
Yeah, that “artist” property you’ve got there is exactly what I meant. My file doesn’t have “Horn”. I don’t know why 
I also noticed that the map bm_c2a4g.bsp contains entity or targets with the name “dr_horn”.
From my understanding of the bsp file, it looks like Dr Horn is the scientist that dies from the “Overcharging” of the Tau Cannon (scripted scene in the laser area) 
That room contains 2 whiteboards with Dr Horns name on them:
ftp://ev1te.myftp.org/BMS-ARG/Textures.Whiteboards/c2a4x_labboard2.png
ftp://ev1te.myftp.org/BMS-ARG/Textures.Whiteboards/c2a4x_labboard5.png
There is also a digital display with the number: 5655
Edit:
In the same room I found this notepad on one desk (with a number 47 on it) which looks to be empty at first glance, but after enhancing the contrast in photoshop there is a step by step guide faintly written on how to “Take over the world”, probably not related to the Arg… but there might be more clues in other places that are difficult to spot by naked eye!
Also that noteblock is the only thing on the desk that is stationary (not possible to move)…
Pictures of the area and the notebook (full resolution):
ftp://ev1te.myftp.org/BMS-ARG/Upload.Public/tauroom_desk1.png
ftp://ev1te.myftp.org/BMS-ARG/Upload.Public/tauroom_desk2.png
ftp://ev1te.myftp.org/BMS-ARG/Upload.Public/tauroom_desk_note.png
ftp://ev1te.myftp.org/BMS-ARG/Upload.Public/tauroom_desk_note_enhanced.png (Enhanced contrast)
that notebook is dr breen’s, the actual “take over the world” page is found somewhere else in the game, what you found there is the underlying page with what seem to be pen pressure marks… could this mean something?
Thanks, found the link to it:
That’s interesting. I was running around the laser lab looking for any clues to code D earlier and noclip’d into that room. I was able to click on him and he would talk to me. I guess the scripted sequence only starts when you walk down the hallway. I never actually listened to what he had to say though, just killed the both of them and continued snooping.
Maybe he has something to say? Code C was found at the beginning of the laser lab, and the VIC code is found in the laser cannon area, so code D should theoretically be somewhere in between.
I’m almost finished writing the code for the VIC encoder. I need to take a break from it for a few hours, but I know how to finish it. I did run into a few things that were kind of odd though. The pre-encoded message has to be split in two at a random point. I just put a prompt in for the number of characters to split at, but I’m not sure how this would affect the decoder. There also isn’t a well defined start character. I have my code set up to use “…” like the tutorial that I’m following uses, but I’m not certain that’s what is used in our encoded message. I’ll post my source code when the encoder is finished so anyone can use it and check it for errors. It’s working perfectly as far as I can tell up to this point.
grab me on the IRC later, i’ll hand encode a test message for it.
Very interesting… I always figured we could rule that date out though. Did anyone really expect Storm to rush to set this all up just before release?
Looks like someone got lazy, the two post-its with writing have the same message on them, lol.
Unless the VIC Cipher IS Code D…
I tried talking to “Dr Horn” before he blew himself up. He only had typical scientist babble to say.
Code D + instructions of where to use them. I imagine the method of applying the 4 codes would be another puzzle in itself.
Will do. Let me know where you broke the message and please use the “…” before your message for the first run. I’ll make the start character interchangeable later. I’ll be taking a break for about 3 hours and then I should be able to wrap up the encoder code within 5 hours or so.