Portal: ApertureScience.com (Possible Spoilers)

[Mesz]

One of the flashing images is a birthday cake I believe

EDIT: It's a birthday cake with one candle and I believe it's drawn in ASCII

 

[Operational]

Wow there I was buisily editing my post with more info and people have posted, check it for some new info (in the code tags).

Maybe "the cake is a lie" is some sort of anagram?

Operational, how'd you manage to capture a screenshot of that?

I decompiled the swf object and found the image in there

One of the flashing images is a birthday cake I believe

EDIT: It's a birthday cake with one candle and I believe it's drawn in ASCII

Check the image in my above post - its really a jpeg made out like ascii art.

 

[zukeft]

Excellent, most excellent. Regarding the animals question on page 21, didn't it say that there were 2314 choices?

 

[Dekstar]

The cake could be a birthday cake of some sort. Perhaps pointing to a release date or similar.
No anagrams found for "The cake is a lie" or "The cake is alive". Perhaps, and this is a long shot, but since it's tied to the hl2 universe, it involves the cat question from halflife2. "The Cat is alive" perhaps? Though the cake image ties in with it strongly. I'm still checking for other stuff.

Oh yeah, the relaxation vault could perhaps be a special portal function. Like there's a portal in the vault roof or something, and when you're about to die ingame you get teleported back to the vault through the portal. Only thing is we can't see the cieling of the vault.

And this brings back great memories of the Halflife2 release Tests. Those were awesome!

EDIT: Oh weird. when you login and it comes up with B:\>, try typing CD C (or CD some other drive letter). It'll say not found, but the B will be highlighted.
EDIT2: And when you type format it will supposedly print something before telling you it couldn't be formatted. Only problem is it can't be highlighted and it's black on black. Anyway to see what it reads? How do you decompile a .swf file?

 

[bigburpco]

after you fail entering your UIN, type HELP. It seems to generate a different message than Zukeft described


And a pretty freaky one at that

So... what is it?

 

[Mesz]

If it is tied in with the HL universe then could that be a Cmbine video feed, with the relaxation room, maybe they're being used as test subjects now, who knows, it's just speculation though

 

[Operational]

Excellent, most excellent. Regarding the animals question on page 21, didn't it say that there were 2314 choices?

Yes but they must have miscounted - if you scroll to the bottom there are 2313 choices. (In the code the array starts at 1 - most arrays start at 0, somebody might have counted the 0 by mistake).

The cake could be a birthday cake of some sort. Perhaps pointing to a release date or similar.
No anagrams found for "The cake is a lie" or "The cake is alive". Perhaps, and this is a long shot, but since it's tied to the hl2 universe, it involves the cat question from halflife2. "The Cat is alive" perhaps? Though the cake image ties in with it strongly. I'm still checking for other stuff.

Its definatly "thecakeisalie".

EDIT2: And when you type format it will supposedly print something before telling you it couldn't be formatted. Only problem is it can't be highlighted and it's black on black. Anyway to see what it reads? How do you decompile a .swf file?

The stuff it prints is blank spaces.
To decompile a swf file I downloaded a trial version of this http://www.eltima.com/products/flashdecompiler/
there is not much there apart from the cake ascii art picture, unless you know a bit about programming.

So... what is it?

I checked this just then but I got the same final part as typing anthing else

 

[bigburpco]

Oh, I see.

Also, this reminds quite a bit of Eon-8, although that was a little more... unnerving.

 

[ríomhaire]

I get a black screen :|

 

[Asuka]

Nice another puzzle by Valve. I thought we would never see these again.

 

[ríomhaire]

It's working now. Anyone else notice the letter 's' isn't available on page 3?

Also, the questions seem to assume you are sick and in pain. Perhaps that has something to do with how Apendue Labratories choose their subjects.

 

[Beerdude26]

This is like the tests

 

[Apocalypse89]

Those flashing symbols are freaky.

 

[Asuka]

Security feed!?

This maybe somplete nonsensical conjecture, but do you think that maybe Portal is set in BMRF? Or in the intervening years 'twixt HL1 and 2?

Does anyone remember the thing Valve did with the HL2 official site? That was fun

Thats what im thinking.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

Whats all this puzzle at the Hl2 site?
Also, that was wierd

 

[Tagaziel]

WhoIs on the domain, maybe someone more qualified than me can actually glean something useful.

Anyways, there are two addresses, both ApertureScience.com and ApertureLaboratories.com, all pointing to the same .swf file.

Hmmm... whatever I enter as a password on my second visit doesn't seem to
work, displaying an ERROR 07 continuously...

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

Fine for me D:
I'm scared

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

It's probably been pointed out already, but the reason you can't enter the 64-digit code at the end is because they explain that it's CASE SENSITIVE at the beginning and you can't enter lowercase chars at the terminal.

THE CAKE IS A LIE DDDDDD:

 

[Humidor]

I looked up all of the cakes on the cake list and I'm fairly certain they are all types of cakes, but i found that number 37, Orehnjaca (is a real cake by the way) has what looks like a typo in it, in the console it reads "37] Orehnjac(a". im looking into that further.

also, when you get to the page with the video feed on it, the first time you see it is different from when you press enter, i think the only difference is that it says the 'tapping out characters' line.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

Can someone please answer me when has something like this been done before with HL2? And where?

 

[Cuthbert]

Can someone please answer me when has something like this been done before with HL2? And where?

Yeah, I'm wondering that too. Is it possible to see that now?

 

[Humidor]

Can someone please answer me when has something like this been done before with HL2? And where?

on the halflife2 website a few weeks before release when you moused over one of the images in the media gallery a picture of gman showed up, and the link took you to a 'choose your own adventure' thing where you lost no matter what path you chose, but when you typed different things into the url fun messages came up. I dont think its around any more.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

I'll try nevertheless.
EDIT: Can someone tell me what these tortures are?

Nobody Loves You
The All-Seeing Eye
The Barbering Curriculum
The Informer
The Witness
Joint Suspects
The Big Bang
Pearls before Swine
Chicken Botton
Death eats a sandwich
Hammmerhead
Hammerhand
Fried Hole
Hangri-La
Ivan is a dope
Law of partial pressure
The Spinoza
Gospel Shark
Cloud Cuckoo Land
The Wolf in sheeps clothing
Good cop/Ventriloquist Cop
Alice in Wonderland
Monster Polygraph
Confession is good for the Soul
Silver-toungued devil
Deep Sea Diver
Pay the Piper
Federal Bikini inspector
Big Wig
Carlsbrad Caverns
The Boy who cried
Goonland
Role-Role theory
Zipfs Law
Flash in the Pan
The Little Bird
Welcome to Bethany
Ampere's Rule
The Dental assistant

 

[tehsolace]

When I finished my application, it loaded the finished page and asked me to enter in my UIN(+L).

But I think their site is kinda messed up... cause it had a PHP error above the flash:

Warning: mysql_fetch_object(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /valve/www/www.aperturescience.com/index.php on line 29

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

Valve. That confirms it. This isn't pure coincidence.
I didn't have any trouble.

 

[cojawfee]

Atomic_Piggy: It looks like someone just asked around for amusing phrases and just used those for names of torture methods.

 

[Reginald]

Valve. That confirms it. This isn't pure coincidence.

We knew that already. Someone checked who the website belonged to. And the Relaxation Chamber shows Source models. Notably props from the hospital in Episode 1.

PCGamer UK gave me the impression that the so-called Relaxation chamber is where you start the game and your first task is to escape.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

I'll try nevertheless.
EDIT: Can someone tell me what these tortures are?

Nobody Loves You
The All-Seeing Eye
The Barbering Curriculum
The Informer
The Witness
Joint Suspects
The Big Bang
Pearls before Swine
Chicken Botton
Death eats a sandwich
Hammmerhead
Hammerhand
Fried Hole
Hangri-La
Ivan is a dope
Law of partial pressure
The Spinoza
Gospel Shark
Cloud Cuckoo Land
The Wolf in sheeps clothing
Good cop/Ventriloquist Cop
Alice in Wonderland
Monster Polygraph
Confession is good for the Soul
Silver-toungued devil
Deep Sea Diver
Pay the Piper
Federal Bikini inspector
Big Wig
Carlsbrad Caverns
The Boy who cried
Goonland
Role-Role theory
Zipfs Law
Flash in the Pan
The Little Bird
Welcome to Bethany
Ampere's Rule
The Dental assistant

Made up. And quite cleverly so, sounds like something from the simpsons.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

True.

 

[Qhartb]

Incidentally, the IP that added that link to Wikipedia has only ever made one other edit on Wikipedia, done 7 minutes earlier the same day as the Portal update: it editted the article "Marc Laidlaw" (Valve's fiction writer), updating who he currently shares an office with.

That IP is provided by the ISP Comcast, and traces back to Minneapolis, MN.

12:34:37 August 31, 2006 - The flash file was last modified
13:08:?? September 1, 2006 - Wikipedia was updated to have a link to that site
04:43:07 September 2, 2006 - Google crawled the site

So whoever put it on Wikipedia put it up fast and is close enough to Valve to know who shares Laidlaw's office. I wasn't able to find a reason for a Valve employee to be in Minneapolis.

 

[Dekstar]

I'm pretty sure the "choose your path" tests were just when some of the guys were bored, because when we suggested phrases to try, answers started appearing. There was also an entry for Chris_D, mod and some other important figure at this site. Good times.

Uh well the obvious thing is it's about cake? What's it really got to do with anything?

 

[Tagaziel]

I still think the cake's a decoy. What better way to throw fans off the track and surprise them, than utilize the "fake trails"?

 

[zukeft]

"The cake is a lie" sounds similar to the ever-popular "there is no spoon."

 

[Reginald]

When were Valve formed? 10th anniversary soon surely. Or has that been and gone?

EDIT: In case I didn't make that clear, it would make sense of the birthday cake.

 

[2Fast4U]

Stuff like this is why I love Valve.

 

[Betelgeuze]

They are probably reading this topic and laughing with us... bastards!!!

 

[DigiQ8]

D:

 

[eraser]

Valve. That confirms it. This isn't pure coincidence.
I didn't have any trouble.

Dude, I whois'd valvesoftware.com and aperturescience.com... both owned by the same people. Also at the beginning of the thread.

 

[makomk]

also, when you get to the page with the video feed on it, the first time you see it is different from when you press enter, i think the only difference is that it says the 'tapping out characters' line.

I noticed the bit at the top with the >s was different the first time, but I didn't spot that...

Edit: There are other differences...

 

[tehsolace]

When you enter in thecakeisalie, you get what seems to be some sort of email or message from other worker.

It appears as though they were put into lockdown... and they've been working on 20 year old equipment that only appears to look 20 years old. He stated that the terminals don't have to tap out characters one at a time, which is what it appears the terminal has to do during the application process (it prints out spaces and letters one at a time).

Then he gives us a show of the relaxation vault which has no doors, so perhaps someone gets into there via portals.