Still Alive(Portal Patch Mystery)

Has anyone been watching this?

Randomly on March 1st Valve released a new patch for Portal, along with the patch notes stating:

"Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations."

The only obvious implementation was the new achievement “Transmission Received”

So it seems there are now radios throughout the game you must find and use to pick up 26 broadcasts at key locations. The broadcasts seem to just be a collection of random/abstract noises, yet after some speculation on the Valve forums they seem to hold more information than originally thought.

A few of the broadcasts containe morse code, translating to things along the lines of -


to

(which translates again to LOL)


Here's a good recap by relaxeder:


"In a nutshell:

* Portal gets surprise update yesterday afternoon[March 2nd]
* 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 steganography programs
* Produces 26 weird cryptic image files in a numbered sequence
* Some dude 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
* End up with a bunch of weird ASCII artwork
* We’re trying to figure out wtf it means"

There is a topic over 300 pages long on the Steam Forums about this matter. Currently people are trying to figure out the meaning of the ASCII pictures.

Valve has obviously put a shit load of work into this... I wonder where it'll lead in the end.

[color=darkblue][font=Verdana]The picture is creepy! I never played Portal but I did watch vids of someone beating the boss, of other so-called easter eggs in the game. This looks like serious business.[/font][/color]

The way it sounds is, their gonna back up the data, and try to make a huge update, and if it doesn't work, then they'll just go back to the old one.

That's a pretty awesome update. I love stuff like this. I'm not the mystery-solving type so I usually don't make much progress in figuring this stuff out, but I enjoy watching communities of people thinking outside the box and solving them.

I read about it on kotaku. Pretty sweet stuff considering how cryptic everything is. Valve must have spent a shitload of time thinking this up.

Or they just bullshitted the entire thing.

[color=darkblue][font=Verdana]Me, too! I hope Valve leads everyone to a slice of cake. That would be nice.[/font][/color]

SSTV not ASCII. altho some are SSTV images of ASCII Images so i see where the confusion comes from. im a amature radio operator and play on SSTV every once in a while..

also new patch today i hear that a robot drags you off after you beat the game now.

EDIT: guess that dosnt work...
ITS SSTV NOT ASCII STOP FUCKING CALLING IT ASCII

Love the way they're going with this. I hope they unleash HL2: Ep 3 and Portal 2 at the same time.

Valve added a new ending. Holy shit

Yup, Portal 2 is coming out. Hopefully Valve won't ruin what was so great about the original in order to make it a longer, full fledged game...

Though Valve is pretty good with sequels, heh as pretty much all of their games prove.

Except Left 4 Dead 2. I can't be the only one who thought that it failed as a sequel, right? Less than a week after it was out, people were realizing it might as well have just been an expansion pack.

[color=darkblue][font=Verdana]I thought it was fun. Coach!![/font][/color]