So it's a hoax, let's get over it and WORK ON THE SECOND TEST!!

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I bet its the next test spot... so now ya just gotta figure out the password :(

also i don't think the test would involve getting inside the encrypted files in the preload... i wouldn't think so at least after they toute about how its bad to get inside and stuff
 
I think the meaning of the drawings on the white bored 2 and the Gman.jpeg is "Wake Up And Smell The Ashes".
 
aeroripper said:
It brings up the same message from the first test, but, view the source and there was the pic of the ascII bird right? Well on the whiteboard on schmoozy's visit to valve where he told him to take a pic of the whiteboard there's another bird on there on the clock

http://img20.exs.cx/img20/4497/White-Bored2.jpg

so maybe there is a link there

or not... just throwing out ideas
Click to expand...

secoind bird isa rooster....
generally speaking, whiteboards are used to draw out ideas, i my world at least.
the whiteboards all involve the plot, and on the one with the rooster, you can see the rocksockm part..i bet that he is doing the animation on those 2 sequences.
the script was released... i bet that they are changing it and these whiteboards are to go out to those at work doing stuff, and explain to them the plot changes...
from the rooster board, i get in my head:

dawn of time
wee hours
half-life world backwards
time ticking
alarm
death of alyx @ robot hands.

this is starting @ the top and working in a cricle aroung the board;

death relates to dog, and then end with killing the dog is ok.

first whiteboard depicts th orignal script, and what has been removed and kept.

the remaining whiteboard, and all the messages relate to such, but included distractions for people like us who are trying to decipher the code. Just to keep us happy, and bide some time while the rewrites take place, they've included this little puzzle, which helps them test the security of the product.

just my thought....but they all seem to make some sense to me.
 
dang you guys are crazy to be finding all this stuff... why do you bother? why not just wait for the game to come out?

-merc
 
First Post.

After reading Gunzablazin's theory about odessa, I checked online for locations in the bink videos and odessa. I came back matches with "odessa prison" and "odessa trainstation" in google. Leon Trotsky (Russian Marxist) was inprisoned in Odessa prison. If you think about it there are many similarities to parts of his life and the story of Halfl-Life 2. Trotsky was a revolutionary and radical that brought the Bolsheviks (later communists) to power. The second match was with the trainstation. There is a site, http://www.theodessaguide.com/PRIVOZ6_Train_Station.htm, that mentions Odessa being titled "Hero City" due to its resistance to the Nazis in WWII almost like the resistance fighters and the combine?
Hope this helps someone. Dont flame me :(.
 
Very interesting indeed.

Small spoiler:
Nova Prospekt is the name of the prison in HL2....hmmmm
 
never mind this spot, a mstake was made...




<spot for sale!>
 
DarkDamo said:
dont expect much help from me....im not even half way through high school :flame:

y [in the 2nd whiteboard] is the hl2 [the a/triangle thingy] y is it the wrong way round?? it on the clock on the right hand side btw
Click to expand...

I notced the lamba sign is backwards I put in Lamba backwards, which is abmal (if its the right spelling) and it came up with nozny...

I hope it helps.

On a side note, If one of us do figure it out (I know its a long shot but a person can still dream, cant he?) do we email Gabe?
 
Did you guys know that gordon's name means hero?
I've known that for a long time, but just after reading that 'hero city' thing i thought i'd mention it
 
What about that screaming guy? It looks a lot like that painting... which I forgot the name of. Anyone explore this yet?
 
Sean said:
What about that screaming guy? It looks a lot like that painting... which I forgot the name of. Anyone explore this yet?
Click to expand...

The painting i thnk is called 'the scream' I dont know what looking at teh actual pitcire would do but it got me thinking
 
Hi all. I forget which thread I was reading earlier today, wherein people were asking for ideas on keywords to search for within the image.

I wrote a (crummy) program, to dump only upper/lowercase bytes and it's clear there is no other [plain ASCII] message hidden in there.

Of course, that doesn't mean there couldn't be enciphered data, or who knows what else (I actually wrote a program which checked the low order bits of each byte, for interesting data, but it produced nothing human readable, anyway).

Anyways, the program (only tested within Cygwin :p) is:

Code: 
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <ctype.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <string.h>

extern int errno;

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
	int fd;
	int n;
	int chars_read = 0;
	char buf[2];

	if (argc != 2) {
		printf("usage:  %s <filename>\n", argv[0]);
		exit(1);
	}

	if ( (fd = open(argv[1], O_RDONLY, 0)) < 0) {
		printf("asciiize error: %s\n", strerror(errno));
		exit(1);
	}

	while ( (n = read(fd, buf, 1)) == 1) {
		if (!islower(buf[0]) && !isupper(buf[0]))
			;
		else {
			if (++chars_read == 50) {
				chars_read = 0;
				fputc('\n', stdout);
			}
			fputc(buf[0], stdout);
		}
	}

	exit(0);
}

The dump of the gman.jpg is 133 lines (50 chars a line -- random choice on my part), so I won't bother pasting that!

Apologies if this has already been answered, but who knows -- it may come in useful some other time.
 
lmao, never mind, it's in the sticky, but how was the login info found out?
 
maybe [on the 2nd whiteboard] that the bird that is on the sand glass, maybe that means that time is running out till hl2 is released?? and maybe y see the bird in the notpad it is to signify that it is getting closer??

and didnt someone say that the pics on the whiteboards had nothing to do with the test?? if so we should forget about hte whiteboards.....

also. wat does the d09 thing mean [on the left hand side]??
 
seinfeldrules said:
As a sidenote that painting was actually stolen at gunpoint recently. Hm.
Click to expand...

Its not as if Valve would rob a museum for a test :/

Maybe the word scream has something to do?

But im only coming up with ideas...

If there is anyway for me to help just PM me on it...
 
Just refreshing some info:

http://half-life2.com/test

Site requires password and username-Aim: To find out password and username.

"password is nova/prospekt"

Quite obvious, but does that mean the password to something is "nova prospekt" or "nova/prospekt"?
Or does it mean "nova" is the password while "prospekt" is the username or vice versa?
The slash confuses me. Im a noob, lol.

Also, i doubt we'll find anything looking into nova/prospekt, just the pass/username i reckon.
 
There is an arabic writing on the whiteboard
http://img3.exs.cx/img3/2208/White-bored.jpg
in the bottom right corner.

the writing itself doesn't have any meaning in arabic, unless it's been cut by the picture borders, which is very possible.

I tried to explain them a bit,
http://img59.exs.cx/img59/1348/arabic-on-the-whiteboard.jpg

the "th" letter I talked about is as in "thing" not as in "the".

The first word reads "kren" or "karen" or "gren" .. (there is no 'g' in arabic, so 'k' is sometimes used instead). none of them means anything in arabic.
The second word can't even be read .. but it could be 'dasah' or something .. but I doubt it.

P.S. It doesn't seem like someone just messed up and came up with these letters, you can't do that without being caught, each letter has several forms depending on its position in the word. for example, the scribble on the flag seen on de_dust in the CS:S beta is just nonesense.
Where as the writings on the walls do make some sense (what of them says "CS Source itself!")
 
hasan said:
There is an arabic writing on the whiteboard
http://img3.exs.cx/img3/2208/White-bored.jpg
in the bottom right corner.

the writing itself doesn't have any meaning in arabic, unless it's been cut by the picture borders, which is very possible.

I tried to explain them a bit,
http://img59.exs.cx/img59/1348/arabic-on-the-whiteboard.jpg

the "th" letter I talked about is as in "thing" not as in "the".

The first word reads "kren" or "karen" or "gren" .. (there is no 'g' in arabic, so 'k' is sometimes used instead). none of them means anything in arabic.
The second word can't even be read .. but it could be 'dasah' or something .. but I doubt it.

P.S. It doesn't seem like someone just messed up and came up with these letters, you can't do that without being caught, each letter has several forms depending on its position in the word. for example, the scribble on the flag seen on de_dust in the CS:S beta is just nonesense.
Where as the writings on the walls do make some sense (what of them says "CS Source itself!")
Click to expand...

Very nice find! Now we need an email to Valve asking for the whole thing, even if it is in arabic. Quite unlikely they just randomly had arabic on their whiteboard for no reason, unless someone working there knows arabic.
 
hasan said:
The first word reads "kren" or "karen" or "gren" .. (there is no 'g' in arabic, so 'k' is sometimes used instead). none of them means anything in arabic.
Click to expand...

how about 'Xen'
 
How was the 1st test figured out?

Maybe we use the same thing for the 2nd test, maybe its like the same user name? But i think this would be wrong!
 
I wonder how long it would take to solve this if valve said hl2 wont be released until its figured out.
 
I was using ROT13 on alot of things lately like when i saw λ backwards on one of the white boreds... When I put in Lamba backwards into the translator it came up with nonzy or something like that...

If people can give me words ill translate i any way, I want to figure this thing out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
One of the artists' name is Dhabih Eng, he might know Arabic (Dhabih sounds Arabic to me anyway)

edit: Could it be his signature?
 
For those wondering where my name comes from it's because my dad's half chinese, half scottish; and my mom's persian. Hence the name Dhabih. I consider my self all of those races, kinda a world citizen.
Click to expand...
http://www.sijun.com/dhabih/mainscreen.html

It's persian probably ..
but hey, they use Arabic words in Iran and Pakistan too, so the writing could be in a language other than Arabic.

hey, I know what, print that portion of the image, and show it to anyone you know from those countries, ask him what it could mean.
 
I have an awsome idea!


How about we organise some groups

e.g

1 group - username
1 group - password
1 group - other breakthroughs such as stuff found in binks etc etc

I don't know who is going to be in these groups but this way we might get things figured out quicker

If everyone agrees i can tell you the 2nd part of this idea
 
I emailed Jesse Cliffe, this is what he said:
Concerning the 2nd test....... This could be the key, or it could be
rubbish.
Click to expand...
he replied in like .. one minute.

I wonder why he cares to reply if it was the rubbish :naughty:
 
hasan said:
I emailed Jesse Cliffe, this is what he said:

he replied in like .. one minute.

I wonder why he cares to reply if it was the rubbish :naughty:
Click to expand...

It might be a clue (im questioning everything now =/)

Like how he said it could be a key... what did you ask Jesse anyway?
 
hey, just a quick fyi, the vernacular of the painter of "The Scream" Is Norwiegan, i translated the words from Noriwegan to english and got, Nova=Nova and Prospekt=prospecting???
 
Its all connected! :O :O :O


Its sometihng Norweigen!!!!
 
haha how vague yet delightfully informative. We are on the right track imo.
 
I interpret that to mean that it is rubbish. It would be interesting to find someone who knows how to read Persian though.
 
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