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Portal Update Hints At New Game
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."
Considering it's been what...6 years since Half Life 2, and 2+ years since episode 2, I'd say it's about freakin' time for 3 to get released. Hurry it up, Valve!
Living With a Nerd
The rain was getting harder. It was now precisely 11:51 PM, and Mark was into his fifth beer. He was feeling pretty invincible but the night was young, and he intended to get wasted before it was all over. He had put in a rough week at work and he deserved it.
He lit another cigarette. He and his drinkin' buddies sat in their traditional circle, in Ian's apartment. The talk wandered from sex to work, back to sex, to basketball, finally settling on sex. Mark had eaten lunch at Taco Bell, and had drunk four cups of coffee between lunchtime and quitting. In addition, the beers were beginning to settle in. And now, at 11:51 PM, Mark had to take a shit. He stood up. "Shit break," he announced. It was customary among this group to make such an announcement.
Mark walked to the bathroom. As he locked the door behind him, thunder boomed. It was storming out there.
He pulled his pants down and sat on the toilet. Ian's bathroom was a mess. He counted five empty toilet paper rolls, two paperbacks, and yesterday's newspaper. His friends laughed about something. The lights flickered for a moment, and the pre-shit growl came from within. He could feel the product lined up inside him for disposal. Then, he began to push.
Plop. The first piece fell to the water. Then some movement, and Mark felt the main feature inside him, the mother lode. He grunted softly as he squeezed it out. It crackled past his sphincter, and splashed neatly into the bowl.
Then another one queued up, and came out. It was almost as big as its predecessor. Mark would have well-purged bowels tonight, he realized with a smirk. He heard thunder again, closer this time.
Another one? Jeez, he thought. When was my last shit? It ventured forth, Mark's muscles helping it out. It was the biggest one so far. The shit's passage through his anus, that rarest mix of pain and pleasure, was longer than any he could remember. Ahhhh...the stout log advanced with conviction. This was definitely going to be his finest creation; this was a huge one. Still grinning, he wondered if Ian had a camera.
He pushed. Peering between his legs, past his genitals, he saw that it had reached the water. This was like seeing the longest freight train ever. Damn, it was a wide one. And it was still attached! And there was more! He pushed more, harder. It kept coming. He couldn't even feel the end of this one yet; soon it was bending, folding on itself like a sundae topping. Mark stopped pushing and caught his breath. He was sweating; he realized that however long this piece of shit was, it wasn't nearly all the way out yet. He still couldn't feel the end.
He pushed, he strained, it kept coming. His intestines couldn't be that damn long, but this shit just wouldn't quit. In fact, he was feeling the diarrhoeal urgency of *having* to shit. He dutifully answered nature's call, and pushed harder. His efforts were rewarded with more shit. His sphincter was too strained to even pinch the loaf off. It was whole and complete.
He couldn't feel the end.
Fear now came to Mark. He flushed the toilet to make room for more. Even as the bowl refilled, the cramps rose up, and he pushed. Within seconds, the shit extended from his anus to bottom of the bowl. The harder he pushed, the more he had to shit. And it was getting worse. He scarcely had time to catch his breath; his face was quite red as he grunted and struggled to keep up. The shit seemed endless. He looked between his legs again, and gasped as he saw that the bowl was fully a quarter filled with his product, the water dangerously high. The tank wasn't even done filling, but he flushed again. Unfortunately, the plumbing was unable to handle the volume of feces, and the toilet backed up. Mark jumped when the cold water touched his buttocks.
It was now 11:57. Thunder roared outside as water and shit particles flowed onto the tile.
Mark's pants were bunched about his ankles, and he was in pain. The shit advanced relentlessly as he stumbled into the bathtub. He was almost panicking now, and
I thought this was going to be another boring videogame article until I actually read it:
THAT is neat!
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
The sequel is a lie.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I have to give Valve a lot of credit for this one. They have gone to a lot of work putting this whole thing together. They even put up a dial-up bulletin board system to host the ASCII images that everyone is speculating about. In fact, just getting to the BBS required a lot of work on behalf of geek gamers. Say what you want to say about Valve, but they deserve major credit here. I enjoy the Half-Life universe, and am hoping and crossing my fingers for an announcement this month.
the most interesting theory i've heard regarding this is that you'll have a portal gun in episode 3.
the possibilities, they would be endless.
Upto 16 players please. Able to use each others portals.
The levels won't be balanced for it, but the fun you could all have with a few cubes...
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
That was not wise. They should have waited a month.
All the ascii files can be viewed from this site: http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/702929/Portal-ASCII-Images-Revealed-Portal-2s-First-Screenshot.html
A sequel to this masterpiece should have been already been out. Valve spends way too much effort developing the latest bit of overblown DLC for the 6-year-old title they've been milking to death (Half-Life 2) and it's only now that they're even ANNOUNCING a sequel to their best property by far? Portal is their best property, and they seem to treat it as an red-headed afterthought to Gordon Freeman's latest round of sewer running.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Gah, I went through the first 20 pages of the thread compulsively. I can only imagine how much productivity I'd lose if my Xbox hadn't been stolen last year and I could still play the game.
But here's what one poster came up with, from hacked sound files:
#1 - Dinosaur 1 (morse code)
=
Interior transmission active
External data line active
Message digest active
#2 - Dinosaur 5 (md5 hash)
=
9e107d9d372bb6826bd81d3542a419d6
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
#3 - Dinosaur 12 (morse code)
=
System data dump active
User back up active
Password back up active
#4 - Dinosaur 17 (morse code encoded as "beep" and "beeep") .-.. --- .-..
=
"LOL"
Filter error: Please use fewer 'junk' characters. What's Slashdot doing looking at my junk, anyway?
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Come on Slashdot, don't involve me in your pro-choice vs. pro-life politics.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
spoiler alert: Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Harry Reid are the combine leaders. The hnic is ... Nancy Pelosi.
Obviously.
"But one thing’s for sure — geeks once again have GLaDOS on their minds. We’ll surely be hearing more from the evil computer very soon."
Whoa there. Evil? She (it?) wasn't really evil. In the absence of other Aperture Science staff to do the job she was continuing to manage some experiments with human subjects. That's all. It wasn't her fault if those subjects sometimes had ... unfortunate accidents.
About time, I have been thinking about HL2 and the next episode! But as you have always said Valve, when it's done!
Gimmie, Gimmie Nooooooow!
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
they will be adding the portal gun to TF2(3)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hello this is Eugene Walter, VP of Research and Development at Apeture Food Group Inc.
Some people are implying that the now dissolved Apeture Science Group's (which I was the former CIO of) computer systems has some How recoverEd from the horribLe chemical explosion at the former ASG Production facility. This rumor is a LIE. An out right lie by jaded Black Mesa Research employees who's Grant money aLso collapsed Around the time of the Apeture Science Group's inDustrial accident at the San PedrO facility for AeroSpace DeveLopment. SInce the ASG's dissolVment thosE at the parent company ASG Inc. have Spent years fighting baseless rumors of "Exotic Experiments" and under-the-table military experiments. These claims are outright lies. No portion of the GLADOS survived the explosion as the federal investigation that followed clearly substantiates.
In closing please remember that the ASG no longer exists and there it no cause for further speculation. I would also like to remind you that the Apeture Food Group has a wonderful bake sale going on at the Leanaa facility to raise money for the Hope Charity group. Please stop buy and try the cake.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Its Portal 2, had a friend who was on the internal Valve testing team and he told me about this last month. He said it looked great!
Alternate Reality Game?
Isn't that all games. In reality I have a job and killing scads of people makes you a bad person and usually lands you in jail. In games, neither of these are the case.
So how is "alternate reality" a qualifier that separates one kind of game from another?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Your OP indicates that the people doing the sleuthing uncovered a PHONE NUMBER for a BBS. Not an IP address + port number.
This is just awesome and funny.
-chris
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.
I've been trying to get into that bbs all yesterday..... I finally dug up my 2400bps modem, a wyse terminal, and almost all the cabling I needed (I seem to have misplaced my null modem!)... The DUN in my cell phone does not like that server, and I can't find any of my usb-> serial adapters, and all my appropriate gear is buried!
The image at BBS that shows us the first location in ASCII art has a message on the right, saying "Insert the disk 14 into drive B"
Anyone play monkey Island?
screenshot or it didn't happen
-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
Well that's just wrong. The radios are hidden on every map, it's literally not possible to carry a radio between puzzles.
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/62617 Valve has released a series of images in the style of well known Apple ads including a TF2 Heavy in an Ipod-like image, a TF2 sentry gun with the words "I'm a PC" next to a Portal sentry gun, a "Think Different" style ad featuring L4D's Francis with the text "I hate different" and an old Macintosh ad with text about bringing a gaming download system to another operating system.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Recursive morsecode? SSTV images? BBS numbers? Obscure hints all over?
WOW.
I just hope they spare some time to work on an actual game with all this going on!
Damnit, why didn't the summary come with a SPOILER warning? After reading the Steam update I really really wish I'd had the chance to figure out what it means on my own. The Steam update note is such a brilliantly crafted two-liner that at first glance it looks like a regular bugfix note... until you digest it for a second and realise that it doesn't make any sense in that respect, and then it just begs you to start playing the game again to find out what's actually changed.
But of course like most Slashdotters I read the whole summary first and couldn't help seeing some of the comments in the process, so at that point it was too late to know that they've revealed too much! I stopped reading as soon as I realised to limit the damage, but now that I kinda know where to look, and know that it's the first piece of a much bigger puzzle, it just isn't going to be the same as getting to unravel it on completely my own.
*sigh*... if only I hadn't been out the last two evenings, then I would have seen the Steam announcement on their feed when it came out. :-(
P.S. The Lone Gunmen are dead!
about half life 2 was the "uprising" theme you feel while playing through the games. And while I can't tell if valve is trying to make social commentary, the games themselves are each a master piece. And I wish episode 2 didn't have to end in such a way ;_;
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.
We also may see the source engine come to Linux, as it is rumored that valve has been rewriting the engine to run natively on linux. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=source_linux&num=1
I'd like to see the game-play of Portal with the gravity of Prey.
I really want that 'Im a PC' image for my desktop :)