Rank: Admin
Groups: Administration
Joined: 10/20/2007
Posts: 1,525
Points: 3,139
|
From Geek.com: Out of the blue yesterday, Valve released a new patch for Portal on PC. The patch notes said nothing more than:
Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations.
While most gamers scratched their heads at what this meant, it was noticed that a new achievement had appeared for the game too. It was simply called “Transmission Received”.
What followed was avid Portal players attempting to figure out what they had to do to get the new achievement. Apparently you need to carry a radio with you through the game and pick up 26 broadcasts at key locations. But the broadcasts seem to hold more information than initially thought, and gamers are attempting to extract it.
The sequence of events is nicely summed up by Steam forum poster relaxeder:
In a nutshell:
Portal gets surprise update yesterday afternoon
People see new mystery achievement
People play and see the radio in the beginning room now has a green light
Carry it around and notice it makes strange broadcast interference noises in certain places
Locate and place all 26 of these mystery radios for achievement
Smart people yank wav files out of game content folders and run them through steganography programs
Produces 26 weird cryptic image files in a numbered sequence
Some dude runs the number string through an md5 hash translator and gets a landline number
Internet traces it to Kirkland, WA (near Valve HQ)
People find out its not a phone/fax line but a data line hosting a BBS and telnet it
Use a clue from one of the files to figure out the BBS user/password login info
End up with a bunch of weird ASCII artwork
We’re trying to figure out wtf it meansHmm...
|
