NEW THREAD IS OVER HERE! http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=904084
























































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HEY YOU, READ THIS BEFORE TRYING TO BEAT THE RECORD OF THE DUMBEST QUESTION EVER:

• GAME INFORMER IS GOING TO RELEASE A NEW PIECE OF INFO EVERY TWO DAYS ABOUT PORTAL 2: http://gameinformer.com/mag/portal2.aspx
• LOOK AT THE LATEST BBS DUMPS OVER HERE: http://kevin.fobby.net/portal_puzzle/bbs_dump_pictures/
• THE CAN OF BEANS IS A PLACEHOLDER MODEL ONLY USED TO ANIMATE THE CAMERA DURING THE NEW ENDING SEQUENCE. IT HAS NO RELEVANCE WHATSOEVER, AND THE ROBOT'S NAME IS NOT BEANS.
• THE BABEL SITE IS NOT AN OFFICIAL SOURCE, DON'T REFER TO IT. IT IS FAN-MADE.
• http://www.aperturescience.com HASN'T BEEN UPDATED SINCE 2007, STOP USING IT!
• DO NOT DIAL THE BBS NUMBERS. All this will do is slow down the people who are actually able to use it.
• People who have been able to get onto the BBS have been prompted with a login screen for GladOS v3.11 — 3/11 is March 11th, when Gabe Newell is set to receive an award. We are likely to get more news on that day, so stay tuned!
• This thread bases its "days" on Valve Time, which is the Pacific Standard Time. Day 1 was thus considerably shorter than the others. For us western europeans, it means that we increment days around 7 a.m. !

This O.P. will be updated as soon as a new valuable and believable piece of information has been discovered. P.M. to me stuff that could be added, thanks!

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LATEST UPDATES AND HAPPENINGS - In reverse chronological order (most recent above)

DAY 5: PORTAL 2 ANNOUNCED - http://store.steampowered.com/news/3559/

• Underlined letters in the SteamPowered article are: drattmannh0nee. Apparently a reference to the Test Subject who scribbled all the notes ("over here" "the cake is a lie" for example) in Portal 1. We've have been able to log in the BBS thanks to drattmann as the username and h0nee as the password.
• Portal 2 Gameinformer Coverage: http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archi...-revealed.aspx
• New images: Chell seen from the side (apparently), a turret (was shown under the BBS progress bar), another three panels thing, and finally something unknown.

DAY 4: FOLLOWING THE PROGRESS BAR - (see wiki page)

• [The dinosaur_fizzle sound spectrum matches another dinosaur image! And it could apparently be the Citadel from HL2. THIS MIGHT NOT BE IT BUT IT LOOKS VERY SIMILAR NONETHELESS.
• The progress bar is advancing linearly. It should be complete during the night of March 5th.
• Also, dinosaur images are getting cleaned up by the IRC team, and new stuff is being found.
• New crazy theory: the Apollo dino images are referring to the satellite which is mentioned near the end of Episode Two.

DAY 3: VALUABLE ASSET RETRIEVAL - Pastebin BBS log

• escape_02 updated, new ending where a robot drags you away talking about the Party Escort. Here's the robot voice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcQFZU2_zIg. Here's the new ending: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJruBtuUACo
• No images in the two new dinosaur fizzles
• The BBS progress bar is randomly updating with messages such as "Estimated Time Remaining: x" where x can be "until the heat death of the universe", "prehistoric age", "last thursday" (note that March 11th is a thursday...
• Here are all three fizzles combined: http://servage.sforum.nl/gits/dinosaur_fizzlecombi.wav
• Loads of new ASCII : here are raw dumps, images are below this list - #1 - #2
• Voices isolated from the fizzles : "Chell, get out of here, I'll follow you" - http://servage.sforum.nl/gits/voice.wav or http://servage.sforum.nl/gits/voice2.wav (one might be more understandable depending on your hearing). These come from the three fizzles. Get out of here is in the first one, Chell is the last part of the second, I'll follow you is the last part of the third.
• Crazy theory: Chell is the valuable asset.

DAY 3: MYSTERY OF THE BBS BANNER - see the original post

The MOTD of the BBS seems to alternate between SYSTEM DUMP DATA BACK-PRESSURE HIGH: USE BACKUP ACCOUNT TO RELIEVE, and SYSTEM DUMP DATA BACK-PRESSURE LOW: ALTERNATE RETRIEVAL PENDING, apparently depending on which account we log in.

DAY 2: CLEANED-UP SOUND FILE - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7ALEgQeBS4

People mostly recolored stuff (see the Valve BBS section), while some weird folks leaded the whole megathread populace on false trails. However, you can clearly hear Alyx at 0:14 on this video : "get down, they're everywhere". Here's a different version, rougher but with more voices: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hD_Q6MVHJM

DAY 1: THE RADIO TRANSMISSIONS - 26 dinosaur sound files

Each of the in-game radios has a new freaky sound upon their vaporization, and for each one, another unique sound — sometimes morse code, but deep within most of the latter, images were actually encoded. Using fancy stenography software, Facepunch has been able to decode them. On the third and tenth images, a string of numbers — a BBS phone number — was unveiled. Upon dialing it with one of these antique modems, ASCII images are sent to your terminal. We suspect Valve is slowly releasing Portal 2 / Episode 3 artwork through it. BBS images are further down this thread.

Here is a compilation of the cleaned-up versions of the SSTV'd images : http://filesmelt.com/dl/portal_2_sstv.jpg



#1 : interior transmission active, external data line active, message digest active
#5 : 9E107D9D372BB6821BD91D3542A419D6 ; MD5 hash of The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
#12 : system data dump active, user backup active, password backup active. Includes the username and the password (both backup) to login to the BBS number, which is (425) 822-5251

DAY 1: THE PORTAL RADIO UPDATE - http://filesmelt.com/dl/ohohohwhatsthisdoinghere.png

Valve released a sneaky update that added radio transmissions to the original Portal radios. They only appear after you've completed the campaign and have the Heartbreaker achievement. Here's a quick walkthrough of the "Transmission Received" achievement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSqG-SmXriU

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UNCONFIRMED STUFF - might be unrelevant, might be fake, we gotta sort these out

• DAY 4: XEN SKYBOXES - A Xen theory is emerging ; and people found Xen skyboxes in the Portal GCFs (and it's not fake ; more proof). It may, however, be a false trail thrown at us by the Valve overlords...
• DAY 4: THE BRIDGE - The bridge from Episode 2 might be referenced in the ASCII art (this one might be the Portal 1 scaffolding near the end, look at this one which resembles the bridge more closely too).
• DAY 3: GABE NEWELL ANSWERS AN E-MAIL IN BINARY - http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/7637/gabewhat.jpg - Binary translation: You will know ; It will all be known in a near future ; Protocol 602. (fake until proven otherwise
• DAY 3: CAVE JOHNSON AND HIS "BLACK MESA FRIENDS" - http://i49.tinypic.com/2cyr2w.jpg (confirmed fake by author)
• DAY 3: SCATRATOA SOUND FILE - (download WAV here) feel free to keep investigating, but it sounds like a dead end
• DAY 3: IS SOMETHING HIDDEN IN THE SPECTRUM OF THE SOUND FILES? - http://filesmelt.com/dl/dinoscale.png
• DAY 2: SPOOKY PORTAL RADIO SOUNDS - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyUbiCsYIdw (Ep.2 sounds slowed down)

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IMAGES FROM THE VALVE BBS - compilation sets and single images

You can now find them over here: http://portalwiki.net/index.php?title=Known_Images

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BUT THERE'S MORE! - Links to miscellaneous yet relevant stuff

Portal Update Megathread Mark II : http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=903178
Portal Update Megathread Mark I : http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=902578
Portal Update Megathread Original : http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=902479

Transmission Received achievement walkthrough : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSqG-SmXriU
A crazy theory about a link between Episode One and Portal : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgG3eRYQfpE

Project wiki: http://portalwiki.net/
IRC channel : #portal @ irc.chat-solutions.org
Steam group : http://steamcommunity.com/groups/FPTR
Facepunch Ventrilo : 69.90.34.26 / Port: 4014 / Password: imperium

~ from northwestern france with love, Max

another?
were'nt we done already?

So, right now, all we're doing is waiting?

I had no idea there was a progress bar in the BBS.

I figured out how to properly connect to the BBS, but my laptop battery died.

i_speel_good here, reporting for duty.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1288617/port...orassuming.wav
I must be the only one with this in the end of their dinosaur fizzle 3 (it was really fast, so I lowered the pitch and slowed it down).

I'm wondering about the new ending of portal because the robot says: "Thank you for assuming the party escort submission position" I guess the robot brings you to some FAKE CAKE (Not THE cake!)

I've completed the achievement now, cool alternate ending

An insightful piece of information from Housemaster. You can thank him

The party escort submission position is what GlaDOS say when you first escape. It's simply a truth enhancement. What the submission position is, is that you lie down, and wait for someone to pick you up.

A sticky! Nice!

Valve team is probaly one of the best around at making these kind of secrets for fans to find. They spend quite a good time and make it challenging to find them.

Is anyone getting a bug where the ending does not come after the first ending? (After being pulled away by the robot the journey to the cake is pretty much b0rked for me..)

Think of it like the police arresting you.

Clearly this is an A+ thread

Heh, I called like, 8 times and couldn't. I hope my phone company didn't kill me with long distance charges. Living in Canada, I should have known :|

You don't call it, you connect via telnet.

The video in the OP has gone Private.

I can't believe it's only been 4 days and we're already into Mark III.

*2 years later*

These puzzles sure are tricky.

I don't see why Valve is so under-rated, you don't see Bungie or whatever doing awesome shit like this.

Bungie had an elaborate ARG to promote Halo 2. They even used a bunch of random pay-phones across the country to communicate with players.

Oh. That is kinda cool.

Bungie are cool, they made Marathon and Oni.

But VALVe... just... just VALVe.

Might want to mention that some of the dino images seem to be taken from Adam Foster's Flickr page. Adam Foster is the guy who made Minerva: Metastasis, an awesome HL2 mod, and he was hired up by Valve a while back.

EDIT: I know this is late you guys, I'm saying that this info should be in the OP.

No, I re-beat glados to see the drag-away scene then sat through the credits. Everything looked normal after the fade to black (after the scene outside) to me.

The progress bar is now at 52 / 76. That is 68%.

Stupid question: what is A.R.G.?

Alternate Reality Game

I find it hilarious that he chose Bungie and not Infinity Ward or something because Bungie is one of few devs who have had ARGs. I would have loved to be part of 'I Love Bees',

Ah... a new day. Time to see what else Valve can come up with. :)

O hay thar!
I'm back
lol - every day a new megathread

NEW THEORY: one of the BBS E.T.A. messages is "Late Eocene". Eocene is a greek work for Dawn. Knowing that the Valve offices open at 9 a.m. which is kinda late dawn, we could very well expect something before midday P.S.T. !

I suppose using Google was too hard?

It stands for "Alternate Reality Game", which is a game played using real-world elements.

What rate is it filling per day?

Out of 3 days it's already half way... something big might happen when that fills up. Such as a new update.

It doesn't advance linearly, more info at http://portalwiki.net/index.php?title=The_Progress_Bar

http://portalwiki.net/index.php?title=BBS_Dumps

Nice compilation of the BBS dumps, here.

Edited:

also lol 276 reading

It started at 38 steps out of 76...

Don't have to be an ass, A.R.G. can stand for a millions of things.

New E.T.A. on the Progress Bar competion: March 5th, 4.30 a.m. P.S.T.