Messages

676

Theorizers / SGP: Theory - Squidhenge and the 7th Column

« on: October 06, 2009, 08:30:06 »

All you would need to make the 7th Column logo out of a Squidhenge is a 7th column.  One item that springs to mind is a piece of the broken Space Tether.  The POGG actually plots these fallen items on its maps.  I suspected there was a reason they would track them.  This is my best guess as to why.

677

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

« on: October 06, 2009, 07:10:34 »

I like your theory.  My spin on it is that placing the binary data in an image obfuscates that data while doing searches through the game code.  A code parser wouldn't "see" the data because it has been visually represented in a BMP or PNG or whatever image format is used to encode the game textures.

678

SGP Task Force: The Librarians / SGP: Request- Vergil vs. The Superintendent

« on: October 06, 2009, 06:46:57 »

Dear Librarians:

I know from the COMM Data entries that Vergil is described as a subroutine of the Superintendent built by Dr. Endesha for the purposes of looking after Sadie.

After reaching the Engineer in the Data Hive level, I was very surprised to see his combat overlay text appear as "VRGL" (or similar).

Would you please explain the connection between Vergil the subroutine and Vergil the engineer?

679

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.

680

Theorizers / Re: SGP: Saving the Engineers?

« on: October 06, 2009, 05:49:59 »

FWIW I have been thinking the same thing.  Kenji is correct, but if we could accomplish what Apollo has suggested then it'd be massive.

681

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.

682

SGP Task Force: Ghost Chasers / Re: SGP: Floor Glyphs and Footbridge S06

« on: October 05, 2009, 22:09:28 »

Don't forget our pal Tepec made us a blank map. It's in the gallery here.
It's a large enough image that I was able to crop out District 08 and use it for my Secret Supply Cache map here

It may be a little "fuzzy" since it is constructed from vidcap images, but it works fine for me (I was going to make the same map so I'm glad he did it for us!)

Really wanting that mapping task force now.

683

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...

684

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?

685

SGP Task Force: Ghost Chasers / Re: SGP: Glyphs in Co-op.

« on: October 05, 2009, 06:24:56 »

If I weren't slamming my head into the keyboard from falling asleep trying to write one last topic, I'd gladly join you.  Can anyone else assist our new member?

Welcome aboard!  Did you go over the article yet?  It might help you with the Super Tri.  Also stand by for my last post, which will be a recap of today's findings. 

686

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

« on: October 05, 2009, 05:06:46 »

Thanks for the detailed report!

687

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

« on: October 05, 2009, 05:03:28 »

I second Kenji's motion!  I finally got thebraino's cool maps up in the gallery and was thinking how cool it would be to have blank ones so folks could use them to plot anything they want to point out; from rooms to doors to glyphs to signs to their favorite Jackal spawn point.

Kenji beat me to it, though.  But me too!  Me too!

In any event, thanks for the maps, braino!

688

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

« on: October 05, 2009, 04:32:32 »

That's what I did up there.    (ASCII = letters)

689

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

« on: October 05, 2009, 04:30:16 »

Are you kidding?  That second one is awesome!  That's one of the places I was mentioning that VsH Tepec Fett visited in his clip.  Your photo is better than the one I was going to pull from my DVD-R, so I'd like to post it up.

The first photo is also great- I found that area and I think I have a crappier image of it in the Gallery here which your photo will now laugh at and stomp into dust!

You've been doing a wonderful job producing images, Kenji!  Thanks for all the work!

690

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.