[PSA] ARG Update - explaining like you're five.

I've spent the last two days following the ARG's progress via the Valve ARG IRC chat. Thought it would be handy to detail the progress that's been made on the ARG in a reddit thread (after having several of my steam friends ask me what's going on).

The Beginning

• Valve updates TF2, introducing a set of seven items (reddit thread, facepunch):

  • Goldfish
  • Pocket Lint
  • Cheese Wheel
  • Barn Door Plank
  • Secret Diary
  • Damaged Capacitor
  • and the Banana Peel

• Speculation begins to occur as to the connection between the items and the upcoming Meet The Pyro and Mann versus Machine updates.

• In the TF2 schema, a string (sentence) is found which contains: "WHAT_IS_THIS_WHAT_IS_HAPPENING". Suspicion further ignites.

• Several users see '6.22 V1500' written on the side of the capacitor and speculate that an update might occur on June 22. They also notice another number on the underside, '07160125', and convert this to letters --> 07 = G, 18 = R, 01 = A, 25 = Y --> GRAY.

• Other users begins to note a 22 in the maps Dustbowl and 2Fort, although this is quickly debunked.

• It is soon noted that the drops of the new items occur alongside other items and do not take up any weekly drops (i.e. they drop on their own system). wickedplayer494 starts to count the number of diaries; by the end of the day, less than ten have been found.

Eliminating the Impossible

• On June 20, Valve again updates the game, with no patch notes (reddit, facepunch).

• Users quickly discover that whilst equipping the Eliminating the Impossible set, in a multiplayer server, the descriptions on the 7 new items changes to show (different for different players):

  • Goldfish: "Thi.k o. ..."
  • Lint: "... the ... .hi.h ..."
  • Plank: "... yea. in, .e.r out ..."
  • Peel: "... may ... .n ..."
  • Cheese: "... go o. ... t.e h.dde. .icke..ess ..."
  • Capacitor: "... such .lace., .a.d …"
  • Diary: "... deed. of he.l.sh .rue. .y ... non. .he w.se.."

• Combining these gives a phrase from the book The Adventures of the Copper Beeches, a collection of short stories published in 1892 and centered around the character Sherlock Holmes.

  • **Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. ** - excerpt from the story "The Copper Beeches".

• Clues are found in cp_foundry.

  • A collection of numbers is found in a secret room on the map --> '1961', whilst on the roof, '13 61 13'. 1961 is the year the first industrial robot was produced, and 13 61 13 was decoded to mean MvM.

• There is speculation that the Dual-Purpose Fruit set may also have a connection to the ARG.

"Valve's gone BANANAS!"

• On June 21, another update hits the internet, again with no patch notes (reddit, facepunch).

• It is quickly discovered that when crafting two Banana Peels together using a custom blueprint, it results in an 'error':

  • Error de desbordamiento del platano - Spanish for "banana overflow error".
  • Yksityiskohtainen raportti - Finnish for "detailed report".
  • Banana Error #__ (1 to 8)
  • Code ___ (from 0 to ~388)
  • Hex String: 0x__ 0x__ 0x__ 0x__ 0x__ 0x__ 0x__ 0x__
  • Cydnabod - Welsh for 'ok, decline'.

• Initially, the banana error numbers are discarded as unimportant.

• Further investigation of the schema shows another new string, which this time reads: ".?AVCMsgTF_HelloPeopleLookingAtBinariesIWonderWhatThisDoes@@".

• md5 hashes are added to the Eliminating the Impossible set. These are used later to verify the decoded QR files/hexadecimal numbers.

  • "md5_388_1"="9e86c9d1ba461d7c3b84ea4bac11b921"
  • "md5_388_2"="f2629207217ce651f1a76ce33346d4c8"
  • "md5_388_3"="5d1a66650820b260b043443137c23dc5"
  • "md5_388_4"="0361ca75733f3c21f4ba4ae216e92155"
  • "md5_388_5"="a0370078eaafd706e75e6a2a45b5678f"
  • "md5_388_6"="0a009353adac7c721d8b4a188a9f8517"
  • "md5_388_7"="6f1d22a53f398fd4404b7fc9d7b1f356"
  • "md5_388_8"="eae894257e8b1502807a3a94fd2fcc1c"

• A theory develops: each of the banana error numbers represents a PNG image, with the code making up a certain part of the image. This is proven correct after banana 3 - code 1 is decoded to show the details for a PNG image 200 pixels by 200 pixels in size.

• It is theorised that the images might be QR Codes, which could direct ARG players to a site or file location.

• A list is compiled for all the known hex codes.

• Submit your codes HERE.

• For those interested, a list of the hexadecimal codes.

Elementary, my dear Watson... (NEW)

• The QR codes are successfully decoded. An album of the images they contained and the stitched image can be found here. And a direct link to the completed image.

• Valve updates the tf2 blog, previewing a workshop made flaregun. Meet the Pyro speculation increases.

  • A screencap is taken from the linked youtube video on the new blog post. A connection between Goldfish, Fort Knox and Valve is made. Original comment here.

• Speculation is rife on the connection between Poopy Joe, Saxton Hale, Valve, Goldfish and Ubernet. Super Monday Night Combat releases an update which introduces a new space suit.

• You can view the "hub" of the work as well as the completed QR codes here. A big thankyou to xkeeper, who honestly bore the brunt of today's work through his website and on IRC!

• And last but not least, congratulations everyone on solving the puzzle! Without your codes we'd have gone nowhere! Now, for tomorrow...

• The current theory is that Poopy Joe could be the Pyro. This isn't confirmed though!

• Note that tomorrow is the 1 year anniversary of Barnblitz and Saxton Hale was thinking of a place starting with "Ba..". With thanks to k3rn3!

• We're also looking at an update on the 22nd June at 1500 hours, Pacific time. As per the capacitor (see above).

• Valve and Adult Swim appear to be teaming up after Adult Swim's website and Twitter stream feature a promotional tie in with Valve.

Diary count: 19

Unfortunately I have to go work now and will be unable to provide updates for the next 10 or so hours. Happy ARGing and I will consider writing a second post in a few days time!