Probably unrelated, but there’s a guy in charge of the security cameras in the beginning of the game, who wins a bet and then talks about ordering a nice pepperoni pizza later on.
Just thought I’d mention, since it’s pizza related.
It would be nice to summarize what steps are needed in order to decode a VIC cipher. It might be more productive and fun if everyone knows what is actually needed at the moment?
Here is my try to make a step by step guide to VIC cipher decoding.
Step 1
We need a number (traditionally a date of 6 digits)
The last digit in that date tells us which digit group from the end of the code is our “indicator group”
Example:
If the date would be: 452012 (just an example)
That means that the 2:nd group from the end in the main code is the indicator group. In this case it would be 94109 (se main code further down)
Step 2
The first five digits of the date is then subtracted from the indicator group
Example:
94109
-45201
= 48908
Step 3
We take our 20 letter keyphrase “The Philosophers Stone” and divide it up into two seperate parts and number each letter in each part seperately after the position in the alphabet (0 is last):
Example:
THEPHILOSO PHERSSTONE
0218345697 6317890542
Step 4
The number from Step 2 is then extended with “chain addition” so it becomes 10 digits long and then added to the first 10 number sequence from Step 3:
4890827980
+0218345697
=5109173677
Chain addition works like this:
48908 (sum of first to digits 4+8 = 12, add the last digit to the end of the sequence)
489082 (sum of the next two digits 8+9=17, add 7 to end)
4890827 (9+0 = 9, add 9 to end)
48908279
489082798
4890827980
Step 5
Each number is then encoded from Step 4 into the numbers from the second 10 digit number group from Step 3
Example:
5109173677 from Step 4 starts with a 5 and 5:th digit from second 10 digit group is 8… second digit is 1 and first digit in second 10 digit group is 6 etc.
So this becomes:
8624601900
Step 6
I haven’t read much more than this…
…but you take the number from step 5 and generate 50 psuedorandom digits by chain additon from it.
8624601900486061… etc up to 50 numbers
Step 7
The last 10 digits from the 50 digit number is then transposed and used as the top numbers in the “straddeling checkerboard”
Straddeling checkerboard is later used to decode the encoded message
Step 8
Before we can decode the main code with the straddeling checkerboard we need to do some transposition of the numbers, which I haven’t read how to do yet…
Step 9
We also need the first row of letters in the straddeling checkerboard (this is often some phrase contaning the most common letters in alphabet)
[B]Main Code from first post:[/B]
31529 63776 21295 33399 44534
97341 68095 91847 99899 47843
91327 76794 07031 80431 91909
02118 97319 80497 17819 91998
59314 91931 41651 49161 97998
43089 11933 13937 48491 89198
98878 29905 90941 84992 89313
27810 43844 11818 39111 19562
74899 49301 99848 05075 50994
47717 11522 89919 13139 93187
87339 89438 64933 23042 09364
38899 25012 93143 93496 10193
68393 99855 90591 22893 84499
88299 23898 73571 38537 15395
81199 28050 39045 51198 32189
91192 71948 45160 15835 13817
89530 19314 97313 00149 44841
39991 95319 03338 19887 71111
82261 19390 95231 31788 08497
97784 11139 39519 34949 93559
35177 10951 18199 31599 70923
15122 98343 [B][U]94109[/U][/B] 31461Feel free to update this list or correct it if i have understood something incorrectly, thain main point is that everyone can get some kind of overview of the VIC decoding.
ps. I only used example numbers, please fill in with real numbers as soon as we know them!
Hello everybody.
I’ve been enjoying following everyone’s progress on the ARG and have been searching QE for clues in hopes of helping the cause. I don’t think this is probably significant–likely it’s just a bit of well-detailed world-building–but in the office early in QE where you use the Tesla emitter to zap a bullsquid, there is a very readable scrolling article on one of the displays. It clearly references the February 7, 2004 edition of New Scientist magazine.
Here is the issue. Notice that it is issue 2433. Like I said, this is probably nothing, but when I saw a four-digit issue number I decided to post it here just in case. I’ll keep searching!
That scrolling text is all over the place though, as you said, likely not related. =/
Ev1te - Awesome post thus far. Very helpful! Two things though, 1: In part 6 I believe you typoed because you reference part 6, lol. - 2: Could you please explain chain addition? You lost me on those parts.
Fixed both of them now! 
Edit:
These two sources for in depth explination about VIC ciphers have been mentioned before and we now think they are identical (at first there was some doubt if they were different, but they only explained some parts in different ways)
https://everything2.com/title/VIC+cipher
https://www.quadibloc.com/crypto/pp1324.htm
- We need an ID (could be Code A - 1001 = 9 binary)
- We need a date/or other code (usually 6 digits but could maybe be code C - 3914 or a combination of codes?)
- We need a key phrase (Likley to be “thephilosophersstone” or variation of it (usually 20 letters or more))
- We need to know the first row of letters of the straddeling checkerboard for the main decoding. This is often the most common letters in the alphabet, often also easy to remember (example: ESTONIA or ASINTOER or AT ONE SIR)
That article stuck out to me too, simply because it was legible. That computer also has a K95.exe shortcut on the desktop, and I think K95 came up earlier; could someone clear this up for me?
not sure if I already posted this, but here’s the whiteboard textures in an imgur album to save people hunting them down in game: https://imgur.com/a/gqxO4#0 - might be nice in the OP
EDIT: seems they were already added
I am creating an FTP server that everyone can use for sharing documents/images etc.
address: ev1te.myftp.org (port 21 or 990)
user: bms-arg
pass: stone
With that username and pass you can upload files in the folder Upload.Public (I will sort them into appropriate folders manually).
if you want to link to files do it without username and it will be a anonymous account without upload permission:
ftp://ev1te.myftp.org/BMS-ARG/
PS.
I took a look on the source code for https://terminal.blackmesasource.com/ and noticed that DR HORN in capital letters only have D O R N in bold leaving R and H out… is this intentionall or does it have some meaning? (I think someone mentioned this earlier but I can’t find it)
Has anybody checked out inbound yet? I haven’t seen much discussion about it on this thread.
Checking out inbound is tricky because, unless I’m mistaken, it’ll load the next map automatically when the tram reaches the loading point.
No, it doesn’t. I just tried it and I freely noclipped around inbound. The next map won’t load unless you’re in the tram. I didn’t find anything useful though, other than a “The pizza is a lie!” which has already been mentioned.
FTP is up and running now (here we can collect all files, even large ones that might be difficult to host othervise)
ftp://ev1te.myftp.org
- All whiteboards are availabe (both image and raw vtf formats)
- Images of most codes and decoding is also available
If you want to upload files, do it to “Upload.Public” folder (use username: bms-arg, password: stone)
I will sort images/files in the Upload.Public to the other folders when needed (if everyone has full access to all folders, there might be a mess)
You can also link to images or any other files like this.
ftp://ev1te.myftp.org/BMS-ARG/Code.VIC.cipher/Main-Code-c2a4x_labboard1.png
if people finds this server useful, then add server information to Original Post.
OBE made the texture and said he just copied and pasted an article he was reading to an email and screenshotted it.
I’ve been following this thread for a while - it’s very interesting!
Today I was playing through Blast Pit when I saw many hand-written codes on boxes. I’m not sure if they’ve been seen before, and I also don’t know whether they have anything to do with the ARG, but I decided to screenshot them anyway and post them here.
Here is a link to an album of screenshots
It’s the first time I’ve made an album - I hope the link works for you guys.
The codes on the boxes (an asterisk means the code was hand-written):
031137900 *
04-0028507
C61 *
72 * and 6phi * (a 6, then the Greek letter phi)
C5 (this was encircled) *
TESUP419648 *
G8M9-018
26 (several different boxes, with different sizes, have this label with 26 on it)
190 * (the box has a non-handwritten message: “I’M UPSIDE DOWN PLEASE TURN ME OVER” - 190 turned over is 061) - I also remember seeing this box in another chapter, at some point before Blast Pit
190 * (on another box, without the upside down message - the texture is not identical to the other 190)
[a telephone symbol] 02/3456051 (so this seems to be a telephone number)
well found, I dont think anyone has checked all the boxes for info like this before
Regarding DORN being written in Strong, I came up with Friedrich Ernst Dorn, the physicist who discovered radon, dont know if it has significance, but anyway, link to the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Ernst_Dorn
P.S Long time lurker and fan of the mod, hi Guys, great job on the ARG!
Thank you! Note that the list may not be exhaustive - all of these boxes came from one or two rooms in Blast Pit. So there may be other boxes lying around in Black Mesa that I haven’t come across yet.
I’m actually just about to start searching through all the models with the SDK tools, so hopefully I should be able to check them that way…depends on whether I can actually access them in the first place though
EDIT: Can’t work out how to load the BMS models in the viewer, anyone got any ideas?
Been out backcountry camping for a couple days, so I haven’t been keeping up.
Anyway about the weird cipher from the shadow comic. Since I couldn’t figure out that cipher on the whiteboard, I tried to brute force it. I noticed the second set of symbols was 14 characters long, and I knew there couldn’t be that many 14 letter words in English (a little over 5000), so I made a program that tried to match up repeating symbols with locations of repeating letters from all the 14 letter words in English. There was no match :-/ so I thought it was a dead end. Just my luck the stupid thing was written in Latin and not English.
Anyway guys I’m certain we haven’t spent enough time on this pic:
https://imgur.com/uVX5s
What makes me so certain? Aside from it directly saying “this is some important text,” when you look at the actual vtf file you find that something was covered up, just like old school CRT overscan, check it out:
https://imgur.com/8wKPl
Been trying to do everything imaginable with this new “24/2” information, but no luck. The associated vmt file has no relevant information either. For those who want to look at the texture file yourself it’s:
…BMS/materials/lab/labscreen3.vtf
I’m going to keep looking at it but hopefully someone will have better luck than me with this.
I’m pretty sure that “this is some important text” is just a texture artist joking around.