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Messages - ColdGlider

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661
Intel / SGP: Ghost Chasers - Gothi's Skepticism
« on: October 06, 2009, 23:34:17 »
SGP member Gothi has used his blog to post criticism of our work here.  Please don't view this as the beginning of some wicked feud.  His blog entry is dated October 6th, 2009 at 5:05 pm.  I'm assuming this is GMT since his site is hosted at a UK domain.  This would have placed his post at 12:05 pm EST and he continued his criticism and exploration into the matter here in this thread at 12:46 EST.

As the producer and poster of the video titled "Glyph Unlock" which stirred the community into more action in this direction, I stand to be the most taken aback by this turn of events.  It's true that I wish the glyph connection to the disappearing door in D08 was more definitive... but I go with the facts.  Without healthy criticism (and testing!) of others' ideas as well as our own, we won't prove anything.

For the sake of accurate nomenclature, we may wish to rename "Glyph Unlock" to something else.  But what?  Possible Unsubstantiated Loading Glitch If Indeed Loading Glitches Exist Unlock?  Well, we'll needed something.  At the time, the glyph was staring me in the face marking the location where I could stand and begin a walk into D08 to find an open pathway into a previously locked off area.  No doubt, the Ghost Chasers will address the naming issue.

Going back to the facts... it is a fact that the community discovered a disappearing door or perhaps even a door which could be "unlocked".  I came along to disprove the idea that brutalizing poor Elite corpses resulted in the "unlock".  That's a fact, as shown by my video.  Gothi is merely refining the process a little... by reducing the glyphs from the equation.  It's no different than what I did in regard to the Elite bashing.

The fact remains that passage into the area previously secured by the door is now possible, whether it is a loading error or intentional game behavior or some other manner of unintentional glitch.  The aim of the SGP is primarily to explore the glyphs, and disproving connections is as crucial as proving them.  Again, I commend Gothi on his critical approach.

If there is anything about this affair that is even the least bit irksome, it's the notion that Gothi's criticism was spun in a slightly negative manner:
Quote
The Secret Glyph Project got on the wagon and produced a video demonstrating the effect and a whole slew of sub-forums were created to track this phenomenon.

What really happened was that the Secret Glyph Project got on the case and produced a video which demonstrated a repeatable method of causing the behavior.  A whole slew of sub-boards (not entire forums) were created and only one of them (Ghost Chasers) was created to track this phenomenon... among many others.  

Those are just the facts.

Gothi's conclusion in his blog post is based on another hypothesis.  Namely, that since loading occurs between the districts
Quote
it's my belief that this is just fall out to the way the game engine loads the levels
Essentially, he presents no more evidence that it is a loading error than I produced of it being glyph-induced.  What we need are more facts.  Multiple people are reporting that they can unlock the door without looking at the glyphs.  This is quickly approaching fact (we need another video).  Assuming these reports are factual, we're left with only the proof that looking at a glyph is not the cause.  There is no extant demonstrable proof that the cause of the behavior is a coding glitch.

For me, the behavior documented in the video was an exciting find.  I could have sat around for hours or even days carefully retesting before I posted the video... while the entire thread on Bungie.net unknowingly kept beating up corpses to get blood on them.  In retrospect, I probably should have.  Instead, I posted what I found and many people stopped their Elite abuse, joined the SGP, and broadened our scope of investigation into other areas.  In my excitement, I may have made the same mistake that the Elite bashers did by associating the wrong trigger with the event.  I use the word "may" because all of the facts aren't in yet.  Rest assured we'll get to the bottom of this and I'll personally grind my own theory into the dust if it turns out to be misleading.

My initial response in the aforelinked Ghost Chasers thread was to organize three specific efforts in the direction of disproving my original theory.  When the data comes in, we'll simply have more facts to use in our assessment of the game's behavior so that we can get closer to determining a definitive trigger... or at least a hypothesis with a wealth of supporting data.

The lesson learned here is something I have chimed in with many times in SGP circles... expectations are dangerous.  Perhaps deep down I expected the glyphs to be the trigger and not the corpses.  If so, then I am my own cautionary tale.  It was never my intention to mislead a single person.  This should be abundantly clear by now, as I have beaten this subject like a dead Elite.

Now to supper, and then to collect some facts.

Love,
ColdGlider

662
SGP Task Force: 7 / Re: SGP: Numbers - ODST BIOS
« on: October 06, 2009, 21:50:24 »
Got time to say where you saw it?

[Panting excitedly]

663
Love it!  Both photos in their own sub-album here.

664
SGP Task Force: The Cartographers / Re: SGP - Dark Areas Map
« on: October 06, 2009, 21:00:11 »
Awesome map, Tepec!  A new Dark Areas sub-album under the Maps album now contains this beauty.

665
SGP Task Force: The Cartographers / Re: SGP - Basic maps
« on: October 06, 2009, 20:40:54 »
Map album updated.  There are now sub-albums for COMM Data maps and Blank maps.  I uploaded Mr. Braino's blanks there.

Nice work, Cartographers!

666
Seen these all over, too.  Please name it, JSM26, and I'll Arkive it.

667
I finally created an album in the image gallery which contains Super Glyph B images.  I have begun with the four from my SubLife article. 

668
SGP Task Force: Black Ops / Re: SGP: Theories - Inaccessible Areas
« on: October 06, 2009, 18:58:36 »
Nice progress, Tepec!

669
This thread in the Arkive is also relevant here.

670
It would almost be a travesty if we cannot find this image in ODST: http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/File:Fr_universal_symbol.png

Since it is linked with Forerunner structures, perhaps we should look on the Data Hive level at the SI construct.  If we found it, we'd also have more confidence that the SI is the byproduct of the forerunners; furthermore, it would be more support of the concept that ONI was aware of the Forerunners prior to the discovery of the first Halo ring (which I think is implied or stated in the books somewhere.)


671
SGP Task Force: Ghost Chasers / SGP: Test Plan - CG003-Halo3Hunt
« on: October 06, 2009, 18:14:42 »
Attached is and Excel spreadsheet containing a plan described in a previous thread as:

Quote
Test Plan 03- The Great Halo 3 Overlay TM Hunt
The purpose of this plan is to find overlay TMs in Halo 3's campaign mode which also disappear.  If any are found (especially if they are otherwise unassuming images) then we can probably conclude that what we're seeing in ODST is behavior inherent in campaign mode of the Halo 3 engine.

The spreadsheet was designed for printing as well as for data entry.  The yellow cells indicate data entry points and should appear with a readable light gray tone when printed in black and white.

If you take part, please make a copy of the spreadsheet and change the file name to include your user name.  If you run through the plan in multiple session, please provide separate spreadsheets for each session as opposed to continually updating and reposting the same one.  This will make data aggregation much easier.

Thanks in advance for your help!  You can use this thread to upload your plans and for questions/discussion.  If you are not taking part in this Test Plan, please do not post in this thread!

672
SGP Task Force: Ghost Chasers / SGP: Test Plan - CG002-DoorTM
« on: October 06, 2009, 18:12:43 »
Attached is and Excel spreadsheet containing a plan described in a previous thread as:

Quote
Test Plan 02- Test the disappearance of each Secret Door
The purpose of this plan is collect images of the secret doors in both of their states (open and closed) so that we can analyze whether or not it is a simple object that is missing or if the door object has been replaced with a new one.  My plan lists only two doors (I am referring to the dark gray recessed security doors.  My video shows the one in D08.  The same door exists in D03.)

The spreadsheet was designed for printing as well as for data entry.  The yellow cells indicate data entry points and should appear with a readable light gray tone when printed in black and white.  Use the data points to indicate a link to the photos you collect in this plan.

If you take part, please make a copy of the spreadsheet and change the file name to include your user name.  If you run through the plan in multiple session, please provide separate spreadsheets for each session as opposed to continually updating and reposting the same one.  This will make data aggregation much easier.

Thanks in advance for your help!  You can use this thread to upload your plans and for questions/discussion.  If you are not taking part in this Test Plan, please do not post in this thread!

673
SGP Task Force: Ghost Chasers / SGP: Test Plan - CG001-GlyphTM
« on: October 06, 2009, 18:10:01 »
Attached is and Excel spreadsheet containing a plan described in a previous thread as:

Quote
Test Plan 01- Test the disappearance of each Glyph TM
The purpose of this plan is to ascertain two data values for each each of the glyph TMs: whether you can see it without VISR mode and in which districts is disappears in, if any.

The spreadsheet was designed for printing as well as for data entry.  The yellow cells indicate data entry points and should appear with a readable light gray tone when printed in black and white.

If you take part, please make a copy of the spreadsheet and change the file name to include your user name.  If you run through the plan in multiple session, please provide separate spreadsheets for each session as opposed to continually updating and reposting the same one.  This will make data aggregation much easier.

Thanks in advance for your help!  You can use this thread to upload your plans and for questions/discussion.  If you are not taking part in this Test Plan, please do not post in this thread!

674
Gothi's skepticism followed by experimentation followed by making a report is good work.   We may not like the thought that we have found a loading error and not an intentional easter egg, but as scientifically-minded SGP members we have to go with facts and the highest probabilities based on concrete evidence.

If this gets you bummed out, you can at least take comfort in two things:
  • We still have acquired access to areas that were locked and made a significant discovery in the game
  • We have only begun our exploration- there are many more avenues to follow

In order to be certain of which is more probable (loading glitch or easter egg) I feel we should handle the glyph issue and the door issue separately.  We're going to need a little background and nomenclature, then I'll propose some test plans.

ZaggRukk pointed out in another Ghost Chasers thread that some glyphs can be seen without the VISR and some cannot.  From a technical standpoint, it looks like we're dealing with two forms of texture maps (TMs): one is a "base" TM which that object in the game will always have.  The other is an "overlay" TM which can be added to an object later.

Our current hypothesis is that the Overlay TMs are the ones that disappear.

Test Plan 01- Test the disappearance of each Glyph TM
The purpose of this plan is to ascertain two data values for each each of the glyph TMs: whether you can see it without VISR mode and in which districts is disappears in, if any.

Test Plan 02- Test the disappearance of each Secret Door
The purpose of this plan is collect images of the secret doors in both of their states (open and closed) so that we can analyze whether or not it is a simple object that is missing or if the door object has been replaced with a new one.  My plan lists only two doors (I am referring to the dark gray recessed security doors.  My video shows the one in D08.  The same door exists in D03.)

Test Plan 03- The Great Halo 3 Overlay TM Hunt
The purpose of this plan is to find overlay TMs in Halo 3's campaign mode which also disappear.  If any are found (especially if they are otherwise unassuming images) then we can probably conclude that what we're seeing in ODST is behavior inherent in campaign mode of the Halo 3 engine.

For each of these test plans I have constructed a corresponding Excel spreadsheet to aid in the process and to facilitate data collection and sharing.  I will create have created a new sticky thread for each with the associated spreadsheet attached.  If you have the time and inclination to fill out even one row of data for any of these, it would be a great help!  Keep in mind that the same data reported from multiple users is a very good thing.  Please do not skip areas of the plan just because someone else has already checked it out.

...and since this is extremely work-like in nature, remember to have fun!  If you take part in this and start to feel the same sense of drudgery that you feel while sitting at your day job or doing homework, it's time to play Firefight!

675
SGP Task Force: Ghost Chasers / Re: SGP: Disappearing Glyphs
« on: October 06, 2009, 16:43:59 »
ZaggRukk:  when you look at that simple circular glyph (or SI glyph) that disappeared on you without your VISR can you still see it?  I'll go check myself when I'm done with my admin work.

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