Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Portal Update Hints At New Game

Posted by Soulskill on from the no-cake-talk dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It appears Valve has begun another ARG (Alternate Reality Game) similar to the one that led up to the release of the original Portal game. A recent Portal update unlocked a new achievement which has uncovered various hidden images and sounds containing references to the Portal and Half-Life universe. Many believe this to be part of the run-up to the announcement of Portal 2 and/or the next installment of the Half-Life series. A thread on the Steam forums has already reached over 1 million views as people piece together the information. Another thread summarizes the information found so far. Based on clues from the ARG, some are speculating an announcement at the 2010 Game Developers Conference where Valve's co-founder Gabe Newell is to receive this year's Pioneer Award."

6 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. really neat by Sir_Lewk · · Score: 5, Informative

    I thought this was going to be another boring videogame article until I actually read it:

    -Portal gets surprise update March 1st
    -People see new mystery achievement
    -People play and see the radio in the beginning room now has a green light
    -Carry it around and notice it makes strange broadcast interference noises in certain places
    -Locate and place all 26 of these mystery radios for achievement
    -Smart people yank .wav files out of game content folders and run them through SSTV programs [http://i49.tinypic.com/s4b7zn.jpg] [Edit: link should work now. Yes, it's darker than the original.]
    -Produces 22 cryptic image files in a numbered sequence, 4 morse code
    -Somebody runs the number string through an md5 hash translator and gets a landline number
    -Internet traces it to Kirkland, WA (near Valve HQ)
    -People find out its not a phone/fax line but a data line hosting a BBS and telnet it
    -Use a clue from one of the files to figure out the BBS user/password login info [backup/backup]
    -End up with a bunch of weird ASCII artwork:
    http://www.imagebanana.com/img/sdl9h...P3ARGcolor.gif http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2801/...b95fd393_o.jpg

    THAT is neat!

    --
    "linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
    1. Re:really neat by sopssa · · Score: 4, Informative

      What does telnet have to do with a dialup BBS?

      Now a days you connect to BBS's with telnet mostly. It gives the same feel and look, but you don't need to have a modem and the owner doesn't need to have several phonelines that are constantly on.

    2. Re:really neat by AndrewNeo · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've been following it and helping here and there throughout the whole thing. Really the whole interesting bit is how they're using old technology to get around this, in the Aperture Science fashion. The radios ingame are CW and SSTV signals, one of the morse code messages was an MD5 hash of "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", telling us to look for a hash later on. Decoding the SSTV images gave us a bunch of pictures when put in the right sequence gave another MD5 hash, this time with some clues of the format "(###) ###-####" we got a phone number to the BBS. The username and password were hidden inside another morse code message earlier on, giving us the ASCII images through the landline BBS connection.

  2. Re:fun speculation by Mornedhel · · Score: 5, Informative

    Portal and Half Life are already set in the same universe. Black Mesa is mentioned in Portal, and the Borealis is explicitely said to be an Aperture Science ship.

    --
    This /.-related sig is a stub. You can help Mornedhel by expanding it.
  3. Nerdgasm by slimjim8094 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I was helping to decode all of this on Monday. And it was really cool.

    Popping open the updated .gcf (game archive) revealed 9 new files - the "dinosaur" wav files. The first few are clearly in Morse code. Translating the Morse revealed some rather cryptic messages that sounded like a GlaDOS bootup sequence. One Morse message encoded the word "BEEP" or "BEEEP" - translating *those* from Morse revealed "LOL". Another Morse message was clearly an MD5 sum - reversing that revealed the phrase "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", which sounded like another test.

    Then the sounds got more confusing - they were much noisier. Someone in the forums, presumably a ham, ran those sounds through a SSTV decoder and came up with some clear, deliberate images. The images were full of random stuff, but one image had what looked like an amber terminal with the pattern (###) (###)-(####) - a phone number

    Each image had 4 hexadecimal digits circled. Taking them in order from the pictures revealed another md5 hash. Somebody wrote a little python script - assuming that the area code would be near Seattle (Valve headquarters), they brute-forced the md5 and came up with a phone number.

    Dialing the phone number played a dialtone. While most of the people on the forum couldn't wrap their head around connecting to a computer without the internet, some folks fired up HyperTerminal and connected, getting a login screen. After looking around again, they found a hint in one of the pictures to try backup/backup. Each time this password was used, a "record dump" (mostly ASCII art) was sent.

    I wouldn't believe it if I wasn't part of it. Reversing an MD5 hash, come on. But it's true - you can run the script yourself.

    --
    I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
  4. New Ending by Gamma747 · · Score: 4, Informative

    A new update, which came out today, changed the ending. Now, after GLaDOS explodes, you get dragged away by a robot of some kind. Video.