A few hours ago, Portal for the PC was updated, with the following as the only patch note:
"Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations"
In addition, a new achievement has appeared called "Transmission Received", with no explanation of what it is or how to acquire it. The folks over at Shacknews did some digging, and it appears that the patch added a whole bunch of new sound files to the game, all of which are just Morse Code. There's 17 minutes of new audio in all, and the sound clips seem to be triggered by doing various things to the radio in Chell's pod at the very beginning of the game.
It gets even more awesome, though. Some people on the Valve forums ran the audio files through an SSTV program, and got some REALLY interesting results.
Translations of the Morse Code, how to trigger the sound files, and the SSTV pictures are slowly coming in, so if you're interested in stuff like this keep an eye out around the internet, particularly on the official Valve forums.
This is why I love Valve. Whether this ends up being a major announcement or just a little thing for fun, it gives me a legitimate reason to bust out Portal again and mess around. The way this is developing, though, it seems like this is something huge.
Post your guesses of what this might be, or the results of your own detective work, in the comments. My hope? This is some sort of tie to an about-to-be-announced Half Life: Episode 3. SERIOUSLY VALVE, IT'S ABOUT TIME.
[Thanks Xander, Daniel, and Allen!]
Contest:
6:40 PM on 03.01.2010
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Counter Strike 2
Half Life episode 3
Portal 2
IT BETTER BLOODY BE!
This is why I love Valve.
This sound was also found in the files:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt3uog2tKAQ
Scary indeed.
We still have no idea what the achievement does when unlocked. Get to it!
http://www.facepunch.com/showpost.php?p=20503283&postcount=224 md5 hash
http://tools.benramsey.com/md5/ reverse hash look up site
"SLOW DOWN COWBOY! (max= 900 requests/hour or every 4 seconds one request.)" is the message.
Long story short WHERETF is EP3?!
Just to give you all possibly false hope.
http://i.imgur.com/ALxcv.jpg
don't ask me how!
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1169218&page=11
<3 Valve
I lul'd at that last image. Valve always has a way of making you dig really deep, then make you think you thought too hard, and then realize you weren't thinking hard enough.
Quote:
I'm in. It's asking for GLaDOS login and password, and is passing a stream of seemingly random junk.
Quote:
it seems to have limited concurrent connections so I have to outspam the idiots calling it repeatedly, and input before I get randomly booted for some reason.
Login Cjohnson
Password porta
You serious!?!
VALVE!!!
*HEAD EXPLODES*
<+Robin> They called Valve support absolutely outraged that they were getting all these requests with "password" requests dealing with Half-Life and Portal.
valve got served