Topics

136

Intel / SGP: Ghost Chasers / Cartographers - Dumpster Diving

« on: October 06, 2009, 06:11:59 »

I played around with jumping in a dumpster during my second day of playing ODST.  I figured the "Keep it Clean!" marketing was a clear lead in that direction.

When I discovered the Magic Wall, I was pleased that it was adjacent to an upright trash can.  I still feel this is significant.

Well over on the Big Forum folks are trying out dumpster diving in more complex ways than I ever did.  People are stumbling on glyph resets in the process.  Perhaps the dumpsters / trash cans / oliphants are something worth considering in the context of glyph hunting.  If so, we may wish to map their locations.

Just a thought.

137

ODST General Discussion / SGP: Important Notice - Task Forces are Forming: Move out, troops!

« on: October 06, 2009, 04:20:04 »

...that's "move out!" as in "I have made you playgrounds and cordially invite you to play in them!" and not "move out!" as in "get lost".

If you see a Task Force create up there at the top of the thread list, you don't have to wait for me to give you the signal or make an announcement.  Feel free to jump in as they appear.  More will appear tonight and probably more tomorrow.  The leader(s) of the Task Forces are listed as moderators.  The Task Force leaders are working directly with me to run these aspects of the site.  Please defer to their expertise.  Or at least recognize that they have god powers over your posts!

If you are not the leader of a Task Force and wish to be, please PM me.

If you are the leader of a Task Force and it is scaring the heck out of you, please PM me.

Some Forces will share leadership.

Keep it clean, people.

138

Theorizers / SGP: Report - Investigative Leads

« on: October 05, 2009, 07:42:20 »

Seriously, last post for the night for me.

I keep forgetting lots of things I have known about for a while but haven't gotten to mention in the flurry of today's discoveries.

• In District 10 back by the blown bridge to ONI, up on the right hand side (coming in) is a glyph covering a rock.  IIRC it's Glyph B.  Will someone please post a photo of it?
• We have no catalog of New Mombasa companies and their logos, which was something I planned to do.  Anyone have interest in this, which ties into the Halo Fiction?
• The loading screen shows your current time in the lower right hand corner.  But the milliseconds count from 00-70 I think (or similar)
• The lower left-hand side of loading screens shows explanatory SI text, such as "contacting VRGL" or similar.  Also something about a data leak on level 9 (data hive).  I can transcribe some of these later, but my video capture setup isn't advanced enough to grab photos at the resolution we require to read the text.  Is yours?  

See you all in many hours...

139

ODST General Discussion / SGP: Progress Report - 2009.10.04

« on: October 05, 2009, 07:26:37 »

If there was one word to describe today's progress, it would have to be: WOW!

I am struggling to keep my eyes open to write this because once the discoveries began I was simply too excited (and busy!) to sleep.  For me, that time is finally an inevitability.   Before I go off to count my Grunties, I wanted to try to pull together what we learned today with a few notes on follow-up "to dos".

Before we do that, let me give a collective shout out to all of our new members!  In one day we were joined by 10 fresh minds:

• mob legndkiller
• jag4191
• Sane888
• ketnerj
• AlkalineProdigy
• Kenji Hiamoto
• Sqweryl
• thebraino
• VsH Tepec Fett
• Omeganuepsilon

Nearly everyone posted, and I received numerous PMs as well.  The wealth of information being shuttled about today was staggering.  I'm truly impressed by what we all managed to uncover, produce, assemble, and organize.  We're making progress!

Now for some of the line items:

District 08's banners might be blue, green, or both.  We need is to dig up some footage from the Tayari Plaza level for clear daytime images.  Keep your eyes peeled while you're in this district and if you can produce a clear image please post it.

>> 2009.10.13 >> SENT: [COLDGLIDER.ADMIN.SGP]  >>  They're blue.

A trip from D04's Magic Wall Super TriGlyph to the D06 Squidhenge security door will blank the magic wall.  [ColdGlider]  More reports on this behavior from our members is required to mark this down as fact.

A trip from D04's Magic Wall while it is blank to the D04 Supply Cache will cause the SuperTri to appear on the Magic Wall. [ColdGlider]

A trip from D04's Magic Wall while it is blank to Mickey's Pod Areas in D04 will cause the SuperTri to appear on the Magic Wall. [mob legndkiller]

If the Simple Glyphs in D06 (near the fallen Elites) disappear, so does the writing on the wall next to the graffiti reading "BELIEVE".[mob legndkiller]  We need to assemble before and after photos of this.

Saving and quitting in front of the magic wall when its blank seems to make it reappear when you reload your save. [ColdGlider/Kenji]

Saving and quitting in a district will maintain the state of any visible glyphs in that district when you load your save back up. [Kenji]

When one glyph disappears, usually other glyphs disappear at the same time.  The scope of the disappearance event can span districts. [ColdGlider, mob legndkiller, Kenji]


In theater mode, you cannot see glyphs while in flying camera mode; you must be following your character. [mob legndkiller]

The Stonehenge rooms from Sectors 4, 5, and 6 form a "V" on the map.  This means you can draw straight line down from the V to form a "Y".  [ketnerj]

The dark areas of District 09 are accessible! [Kenji/VsH Tepec Fett]  VsH Tepec Fett has confirmation Film Clips in his Bungie File Share.  Kenji and myself have taken images which will appear in our gallery. (his are better, as always!)

The dark areas of District 00 are accessible! [VsH Tepec Fett]  Again, VsH Tepec Fett has confirmation Film Clips in his Bungie File Share.

Secret Room 01 is discovered through the first usage of a Glyph Unlock ("D06 Glyph Unlock")[ColdGlider]It remains to be seen whether it was merely the travel from D08 to D06 and finally right back to D08 which was the trigger or if the Glyph is absolutely mandatory.  The video shows before and (briefly) after.

Secret Supply Cache 01 in District 08 is discovered using the D06 Glyph Unlock[AlkalineProdigy]

The first in-game Super MonoGlyph is discovered![mob legndkiller]

In addtion to ODST research, the SGP site had its own milestones:

• The image gallery was expanded to include albums for Glyphs, Maps, and Numbers
• The image gallery was populated by many members of the SGP.  (Thanks to all for the maps and glyph photos!)
• SGP Forum Achievements were debuted.  The first is Glyph Hunter

My SINCEREST APOLOGIES if I have forgotten anything or anyone.  Please reply with any such items, so long as they are confirmed and repeatable research items or member submissions/efforts.  Both of my eyes are almost totally bloodshot and I hear the Grunties calling.

I hearty THANK YOU to everyone who spent October 4th 2009 bringing these discoveries (and more!) to light.  When I awake, I'll struggle to tackle what has happened in the interim and to assess where everyone feels we should extend further investigative efforts.

We rocked the 4th, people.

P.S. Anyone wanna take a stab at a SGP logo / banner / official avatar?

140

SGP Task Force: 7 / SGP: Report - Binary Data

« on: October 05, 2009, 02:08:16 »

Omeganuepsilon wrote to inform me of some binary data he found in one of the images he described as having a "J" below it.  I'm assuming this is the Jotun (sp?) company logo.  Many of the New Mombasa buildings seem to be occupied by businesses with logos and/or names.  I think Jotun is the company that makes the Oliphants (the J logo is on them in District 06).  I'm pulling this all from memory, so it needs to be checked.

Anyhow... I think Omega and I probably expelled exasperated sighs at the same time because this is the sort of thing that could spin us way off course with no results.  Nevertheless it is my duty to report it.  The binary data in the company sign as transcribed by Omega is:

1011010110111101010111111010
1011111001101101101110110101
0101001011110000110011010110
0000011100101001100101101011

So I took a look at it thusly:
28 bits to a line x 4 lines of bits = 112 bits.
With 112 bits you derive 14 equal groupings of 8 bits (the standard byte)...  and you end up with 14 numbers that could encode virtually any kind of data.  

You could also derive 16 equal groupings of 7 bits and be left with values small enough to represent ASCII codes.  And we know all about 7.
Converting this block (from left to right, top to bottom) into 7-bit Decimal values yields:

090 111 043 122
095 027 055 053
041 060 025 086
003 074 050 107

Mapping the values above to an ASCII table provides the following results (text in brackets is a decription of a non-printable ASCII code):

Zo+z
_[End of Transmission Block]75
)<[Negative Acknowledgement]V
[End of Text]J2k

Doesn't look like it was meant to be decoded that way to me, even if you really tried to force something out of it like this (think transmission log):

Zo+z_
[End of Transmission Block]

75)<
[Negative Acknowledgement]

V
[End of Text]

J2k

Still looks like garbage, really.

I thought maybe grouping it into 28 4-bit values might provide an interesting order of District numbers, but no matter whether you organize the data into columns or rows- backwards or forwards-you will always get a value greater than 10 at some point.

We could verify the transcriptions of the bits to see if there are 1s or 0s out of place, but at least for now I'm striking out.

So forget I mentioned it!  Unless you know of some old 8-bit Apple proprietary character encoding scheme loved by Bungie that translates this data into the 14 character string "Recon Unlocked"... I think we can put this to rest.

That was a joke.

141

SGP Task Force: Ghost Chasers / SGP: Request for everyone!

« on: October 04, 2009, 15:31:40 »

If you're playing ODST right now and can see the Super TriGlyph in District 04, can you please provide a screenshot?  I have yet to get confirmation from anyone that they have seen it!  And what about the Super DiGlyph?

PC files or screenshots in your Bungie file share... it doesn't matter to me either way.  I just would like some indication of how many others have found these.

Thanks!

142

SGP Task Force: Ghost Chasers / SGP: Report - Glyphs Unlock a Door!

« on: October 04, 2009, 11:38:42 »

Thanks to a few folks in the Bungie forum and some testing of their findings which I skipped sleep to do, the link between glyphs and ODST unlockables has become tangible.

Bungie forum members ZaggRukk and andymac0909 figured out that after beating up the corpses of Elites in District 06, they could unlock a door in District 08 that has eluded our opening since the 23rd (Nox and myself have repeatedly tried getting in there!)

After jag4191 here at SGP clued me in to new developments in their Bungie thread, I had to try it myself... except I refused to beat up Elite corpses.  That just made no conceptual sense at all to me.  Instead, I took a gander at the simple glyphs near their bodies (which I suspected had gotten Super DiGlyph results for me) and that has turned out to be the key.

If you scope out and/or stand against the simple glyphs facing you on the wall to your left as you enter that alleyway with the corpses, it unlocks that door.

This is massive, and I'm pleased that teamwork between the Bungie forum and the SGP has figured this out.  I will post a YouTube video as well as the usual photos.

The logical follow up question:  what other glyphs unlock what other doors?

It should be noted that the door which is opened by the simple glyphs near the dead elites is a gray security door, and that it does not simply get unlocked... it becomes (seemingly) permanently opened.

Wow.

143

SGP Task Force: 7 / SGP: Numbers - ODST BIOS

« on: October 04, 2009, 09:45:21 »

If you use the scope on a Brute Shot, along the bottom of the overlay is a string of text.  It's nearly impossible to read unless you have a very clear display (I couldn't really read it until I went VGA.)  The code reads:

ODST BIOS A29.B179418.01

Here is an image I took last week before I could read the code:


This image is now in our image gallery.

This is just one of many cryptic numbers we've seen so far, and there's bound to be more. 

144

SGP Task Force: Black Ops / SGP: Theories - Inaccessible Areas

« on: October 03, 2009, 22:33:41 »

Over at the big forum, there is a Bungie Thread regarding the inaccessible areas of the Mombasa Streets level.  This is something I have thought about for some time, but being only one member of the SGP I can only research so much at a time.  Here are some of my theories, in case anyone would like to weigh in.

For the purpose of this discussion, I will be referring to blacked-out areas of the map as "dark areas" and will abbreviate Mombasa Streets as MS.

Theory 1:  The dark areas are largely reserved for future DLC.  If more DLC is deemed worthwhile by Bungie then they'll already have locations pre-built into New Mombasa that have defined links to the rest of the city (the currently locked District Doors.)  If no DLC is made, then the player will be left to assume that the dark areas simply weren't of any concern to the ODST squad in the context of their mission.

Theory 2:  The dark areas are unlockable, but require you to play on a particular difficulty setting.  Perhaps you have to wander MS in Legendary Mode to find that a previously locked security door showing up green.  Perhaps there are additional requirements, such as Achievements.  This should be the most readily accessible theory to test.

Theory 3:  The glyphs lead the way to unlocking the dark areas.  We have seen the Super TriGlyph become the Super DiGlyph.  The legendary ending of the game reveals the existence of Super MonoGlyhs as well.  Perhaps if we discover how to make the Magic Wall reveal the Super MonoGlyph, we'll find our Easter Egg or at least be one step closer to it.

Theory 4:  It takes 2-4 players in Co-Op Campaign to unlock the dark areas.  Has anyone actually played in MS with four players and looked for clues?  How about on Legendary?  We could be in for some surprises.  Perhaps players must be standing near multiple "key areas" in a District at the same to unlock the secret.  The squidhenges suddenly spring to mind.

Theory 5:  You need to acquire the recon armor to get into the dark areas.  Conceptually, this makes sense to me.  It is reconnaissance armor after all, and these areas would be something additional to explore outside the bounds of the normal campaign.  Everyone knows what to expect of the armor while you play in Halo 3 Multiplayer, but no one seems to be considering what might change in ODST.  You have to link your gamertag to your Bungie.net account to receive the armor and then Halo 3 will subsequently unlock it.  There's no reason why ODST couldn't be linked into that process as well to unlock something on its side of the fence.  It has been planned for quite some time now to unlock recon armor through ODST.  Given that a main character (Dare) wears this armor throughout the story and there is even dialog written around it, the idea that recon plays a larger part in the game seems natural to me.

145

Theorizers / SGP: Theory - Why the District 09 Banner is Blue

« on: October 03, 2009, 21:57:45 »

I updated the image gallery this morning and now each District has at least one banner cataloged.  While doing this, it became apparent that the only banner colored blue is District 09's.  

If we recall Danves' discovery that ODST is metaphorically linked to Dante's Inferno then it is a small leap to link Districts 01 - 09 to the nine circles of hell which are also represented by the levels in Data Hive.  If we take this leap then it makes perfect sense that District 09's banner would be blue.  After all, the ninth circle was frozen over with ice... not on fire like the popular conception of hell might lead us to assume.

This could all be blown out of the water if we find another blue banner belonging to a different district.  I want to collect more banner images from the standard campaign mission so that we can see what some of these look like in ample lighting.

Again... WTG Danves!

146

SGP Task Force: Arkive / SGP: Feature - Image Gallery

« on: October 03, 2009, 04:02:28 »

It's taken up most of my ODST efforts today and is still incomplete, but we have an Image Gallery!

You can visit the gallery directly here and there is also a link from the SubLife our site's side banner.

Currrently the gallery is hosting an album of district banners.  I am still working on populating this, but take a look at what is there, especially for Districts 00, 01, and 08.  Each of these contains some manner of banner anomaly.

In many cases I have provided maps to the banner locations if you would like to scout them out yourself.  I have many more vidcapped and in the queue to be published, so keep you eyes on that gallery if you're looking to explore the banner lead.

Obviously the gallery needs an index of glyphs... which will be the next album.

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome!

147

ODST General Discussion / SGP: Attack Strategy Poll 2009.10.01

« on: October 01, 2009, 20:01:11 »

There are so many options to explore.  Where should the focus be right now?  Please cast your vote.  We can always reassess our position later.

148

SGP Task Force: Ghost Chasers / SGP: Report - Super TriGlyph and Gamesaves

« on: October 01, 2009, 19:19:13 »

This is just a report that the SuperTriGlyph appearance state seems to save along with your game.  

As I stood before the glyph in the Sunken Plaza last night, I waited for a Checkpoint to occur.  Once it did, I chose "Save and Quit" and returned to the 360 Dashboard.  I signed out of my profile.  I then reloaded ODST and signed back in.  Once I chose "Resume Solo Game" and the game loaded, I was staring at the SuperTriGlyph again.  I shut down the system.  About twelve hours later I powered everything up and tried again (on the same 360) and as expected the results were the same.

Can anyone else corroborate this behavior on their system?  Has anyone else even seen this glyph in-game?

It's probably a very good idea to provide details on game save state when making reports, so my game stats are below:

Gametype
Network: My Xbox360
Solo/Co-op: Solo
Skulls:0
Scoring:Off
Mission: Mombasa Streets
Difficulty: Easy

Level Completion
Tayari Plaza: Y
Uplift Reserve: Y
Kizingo Boulevard: N
ONI Alpha Site: N
NMPD Headquarters: N
Kikowani Station: N
No. COMM Entries: 3

Profile Stats
No. ODST Achievements: 8

149

SGP Task Force: The Librarians / SGP: Storyline - Data Hive and Dante's Inferno (WTG Danves!)

« on: October 01, 2009, 18:28:51 »

Over in the Bungie forums, Exalted Legendary Member Danves has pointed out that the Sadie's Story and the campaign level Data Hive are both structured similarly to the Epic Poem by Dante.

The thread is here:  http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=37475960

This is critical find and might very well lead us in the right direction when it comes to interpreting other aspects of the game, for instance- the nine Barrier Codes.  Each time we encounter the number 9, we'll have to consider if it ties into the related concept of "nine circles of hell". 

For easy reference, here are those nine codes again:

• 1A
• 2B
• 3C
• 4D
• 5E
• 6F
• 7H
• 8J
• 9A

As I pointed out in my article this code progression has a circular quality in that it begins and ends with the letter A.

With all of the Data Hive curiosities popping up, a conceptual framework for that level is certainly a welcome tool!

Danves (and lets not forget NinjaTheory) have made the Sadie's Story connections perfectly clear as well.  Each of the nine story circles includes manifestations of the corresponding "evil" in that particular Circle of Hell.  This results in the act of Betrayal being linked strongly to the cinematic in Data Hive, as it occurs in the "Ninth Circle".  Although Danves' Bungie thread has pointed out Vergil's betrayal against the Covenant and Kinsler's Cop's betrayal of the Rookie, we must also look at who has betrayed the Superintendent and forced him offline. 

Time to review the Comm Data and cinematics again!

In the meantime, a message for Danves and company:  can we enlist your minds into the SGP?!? 

150

SGP Task Force: Ghost Chasers / SGP: Glyphs - Data Hive Circular Glyph in Cutscene

« on: October 01, 2009, 05:41:38 »

The Data Hive level is indeed a wealth of data when it comes to the SGP.  In the opening moments of the cutscene, Buck and Dare prepare to approach the Engineer and we spot a circular glyph on the top of the Superintendent's housing:




As Dare shines her flashlight on it, a hidden pattern is revealed:



Here's the detail:


The pattern appears hive-like hexagonal.  Anyone see this before?