ARG: Ares Station-New

The Curtain Opens

chippy@forums.unfiction.com — Sun, 08 May 2005 15:59:39 +0000

Well... it's been quit a ride but it has come to an end... :cry:

This was on the main page:

596F752063616E20736565207573206E6F772E

May 5, 2005
It's time to take off our masks.

Ares Station was designed by Nathan Mishler and Will Emigh as a thesis project. We are graduate students at Indiana University Bloomington in the department of Telecommunications. This project represents about a year of work (and around three complete concept overhauls: we didn't even start out thinking we were going to make an ARG!)

First off, we would like to thank our entire cast. We, collectively, put in more hours than we ever dreamed we would need and everyone pitched in without complaint. Special thanks to Rory, who constantly surprised us with new art we hadn't even asked for (hope you liked the wallpapers!), and Ian who stayed up late every Tuesday getting Jacob's sound files ready for Wednesday. We wouldn't have made it without you guys!

Secondly, we want to thank our players: both those who actively came and solved puzzles and those who simply came and watched. Ares Station wouldn't have been the same if our audience hadn't thrown as much (or sometimes it seems, more!) energy into it as we did. You guys were our co-pilots through this whole story. It'll be hard to go back to writing on our own after this.

Two things before the credits roll:
1. Since this is a thesis, and we're going to be writing big thick papers about this whole thing, we'd like to ask everyone who even looked at Ares Station casually to fill out a little questionnaire about the experience. We won't be asking for names or anything that we can use to identify you; we just want to know who you are in a general sense. The questionnaire isn't ready right this moment, it will be up sometime next week, we hope. It'll be up on the main Ares Station page and we will probably put it on the Ares Station unfiction board as well.

2. Nathan and Will will visit the Ares Station chat room (#aresPMChat in irc.chat-solutions.org) at 8pm GMT Saturday May 7 for an hour or so. Come around if you want to chat.

Without Further Ado, Ares Station is:

Developers: Will Emigh and Nathan Mishler

Technical Lead: Will Emigh
Story Lead: Nathan Mishler

Puzzle Design: Nathan, Will, Ian Pottmeyer

Art:
Art Director (Fall '04): Trip O'Dell
Art Director (Spring '05): Rory Starks
Station Design, Poster / Desktop Graphic / Most Everything: Rory Starks
Main Site Design / Character Design: Michelle Buddie
"Charlie" Model / Miner Ship Models: Mat Powers
"Charlie" Graffiti Design: Ian Aliman
Gas Mask Design: Steve Brennan
Blackbird Design: Nathan Mishler

Bloggers:
Michael Trathen, Rory Starks, Michelle Buddie, Will Emigh, Mat Powers.

Sound:
Sound Engineer: Ian Pottmeyer

Voice Actors:
Simon Miller, PIRSIG (the robot), Simon's computer, Charlie, monkeys, Ohmega's voice: Ian Pottmeyer
David Severn: Trip O'Dell
Jacob Jones: Sam Saharani
Mary Haynes: Michelle Buddie
Hanna Redfoot: Melissa Beaver
Garith Yung: Addison Rogers
Ship Traffic Controller: Nathan Mishler
Blackbirds: Will Emigh

And, of course, you guys were responsible for half the story, even if you didn't know it at the time.

The headline...

596F752063616E20736565207573206E6F772E

You can see us now.

Well, they did a great job, I'll be sure to to fill out the questionnaire!

I have a few questions to ask them on Saturday...
I wonder what happened to Jacob Jones... I think he was the one in the pod... because the robot said that there was a life pod just incase he needed it.

Anyway I think they did a great job!

[Applause]

:worship:

-Wainamoinen

[CHAT] Meet the PMs - #aresPMchat log

Center Lot@forums.unfiction.com — Sun, 08 May 2005 01:02:33 +0000

Times are all BST (GMT+1)

20:57:52 WillPM We can just hang out for a couple of minutes in case anyone else is coming.
20:58:09 WillPM But thanks to those of you who are here (and those who aren't, who played along)!
20:58:15 AudioVisualPMs This is Ian Rory and Michele
20:58:51 NathanPM Yes. Can't thank the players enough for playing.
20:59:07 WillPM Ian did all our sound, Rory was our art director, and Michele was one of our designers and artists.
20:59:07 Oshovah It was my pleasure! :D
20:59:30 ellipses Good jobs all round!
20:59:54 hawk absolutely
21:00:01 NathanPM Thank you. :)
21:00:05 * Oshovah applauds too.
21:00:06 * AudioVisualPMs bows
21:00:20 WillPM Thanks! I'm glad you guys enjoyed playing as much as we liked writing it.
21:00:54 hawk can we start with the questions now then?
21:00:56 hawk ;)
21:01:01 WillPM Sure! Fire away. :)
21:01:49 hawk ok, well, one several people want asked: How much of the story was a result of what we did, and not originally planned?
21:02:18 NathanPM Ohhh. Well, for starters you made Hanna a much bigger character than she was intended to be.
21:02:29 WillPM Yeah, she was originally a background character
21:02:53 ellipses Really? never would have guessed that - how did we do that?
21:02:55 WillPM The general story arc is basically what we imagined at the start, but the actual mechanics changed every week.
21:03:25 WillPM There was such a huge interest in her as a character (because of her blog) that we decided we couldn't just bump her back to second-string.
21:04:44 hawk so were there any storylines that they never used because of what we did?
21:04:54 hawk s/they/you
21:05:06 WillPM Oh, yeah.
21:05:19 NathanPM Yeah, uh, about half of them.
21:05:21 WillPM We totally overestimated how many back-stories and characters we could handle.
21:05:30 WillPM Wiithout getting confusing, anyway
21:05:55 ellipses Might have gotten confusing for us too I guess
21:05:56 * Fi (~nottellin@1fbd6a28.d0a9903.gotadsl.co.uk) has joined #aresPMchat
21:06:19 ellipses So how long did you spend planning and writing before it kicked off?
21:06:24 NathanPM One of the biggest subplots I was creating never showed its face. The characters were mentioned once or twice but their subplot never kicked off.
21:06:36 NathanPM I won't say what it was because I might use it later. :)
21:06:47 WillPM Good question. Nathan and I started working together about 1.5 years ago.
21:06:55 hawk 0_0
21:07:00 ellipses Wow!
21:07:01 WillPM But the story didn't become Ares Station until 6-8 months ago.
21:07:11 WillPM And it didn't become an ARG until about a month before we started.
21:07:17 Oshovah Wow.
21:07:32 ellipses So what was originally planned if not an ARG?
21:07:35 WillPM Although it was ARG-ish before that, so it wasn't a total 180-degree turn.
21:07:38 NathanPM It was origional "a story told on the internet" and then one day, Will hits me over the head with:
21:07:53 NathanPM (I'll let you say it one more time.)
21:08:00 WillPM We're doing it wrong. :)
21:08:19 ellipses lol
21:08:21 WillPM We planned to have a much more open-ended community, without any specific story.
21:08:50 WillPM The blog stuff is basically what we were thinking, but we were going to encourage people to become part of Ares Station in that way too.
21:09:14 NathanPM Which happened a little. We really enjoyed the blog responses and emails sent to our characters.
21:09:21 WillPM Yeah, very true.
21:09:46 WillPM But we realized that people would need a reason to care, so we added a strong story element.
21:10:10 NathanPM And then thought, oh yeah, there should be puzzles too...
21:10:26 WillPM Hey, it looks like we're making an ARG!
21:10:46 AudioVisualPMs And then thier heads exploded, which was fun to watch
21:11:03 hawk lol
21:11:12 ellipses So when did the rest of you get involved?
21:11:51 AudioVisualPMs I (Ian) was sort of in it from the get-go, but more as side advice than actual design
21:12:11 AudioVisualPMs Rory and Michele came in in september
21:12:33 WillPM Rory started off as an artist and moved up to art director later in the fall.
21:12:38 AudioVisualPMs Though we really didn't produce much until much later
21:13:01 WillPM And a lot of stuff that was produced, we never used.
21:13:19 NathanPM Ohhh yeah. So many things had to get tossed.
21:13:35 NathanPM We know what Charlie looks like, for instance. There's a 3d model of him.
21:13:48 ellipses Wow!
21:13:50 Oshovah Whoa!
21:13:52 hawk wow! can we see it?
21:13:57 Oshovah Please?
21:14:11 WillPM And we have 3d models of Simon's ship, Jacob's ship, and the station that you only got to see tiny pieces of.
21:14:45 NathanPM We might put out some pics of the whole ship. I'll think about Charlie. You can get an idea of what his head looks like, with Beth's graffiti.
21:15:03 ellipses Ah-ha! I was going to ask about that...
21:15:13 hawk woooooooooooooooooooo
21:15:16 WillPM It took some work to get that right.
21:15:36 WillPM We wanted it to look vague enough that you couldn't tell what it was, but obviously an alien in retrospect.
21:17:00 ellipses Just looked again - very good!
21:17:12 * chippy2 (lurker@de6498d.13919cb5.pol.co.uk) has joined #aresPMchat
21:17:17 chippy2 hello
21:17:33 Oshovah Chippy has a clone!
21:17:39 chippy2 i do indeed :)
21:17:43 WillPM Hi, chippy!
21:17:52 NathanPM We were going to show him in the station doing things, but... well, end of the semester killed that. So that might be have to be saved for the sequel. If there is one.
21:17:56 NathanPM Hey chippy :)
21:18:09 Oshovah A sequel would be nice.
21:18:21 * hawk smiles sweetly
21:18:45 WillPM We'd like to do one too, but there are some limitations with having a story set in the future.
21:19:08 AudioVisualPMs And on Mars
21:19:09 NathanPM Yes.
21:19:40 NathanPM We had to pretend you guys were in the future too, so we could answer emails. ;-)
21:19:52 hawk heh
21:20:08 * chippy2342 (lurker@2e60f4af.15ce2659.pol.co.uk) has joined #aresPMchat
21:20:20 chippy2342 back
21:20:23 NathanPM But I'm thinking of ways around that. We'll see.
21:20:35 NathanPM Any more questions?
21:20:36 Oshovah I don't mind a little role playing.
21:20:39 WillPM We also ignored the time-lag in the chat on Sunday (although we did have a techno-babble explanation for that one)
21:20:44 * chippy2 has quit (Ping timeout: 180 seconds)
21:21:12 chippy2342 how did you deal with the random commenter on hannas blog?
21:21:24 WillPM Nathan and I argued about that quite a bit.
21:21:28 NathanPM Oh boy. That almost gave us nervious breakdowns.
21:21:31 chippy2342 hehe
21:21:33 NathanPM Me, anyway.
21:21:37 chippy2342 it confused us too!
21:21:51 * chippy2342 is now known as chippy2
21:21:53 WillPM When he was just posting on the blog, we didn't mind too much, but when he started posting on Unfiction, we drew the line.
21:22:04 chippy2 did you contact him?
21:22:09 WillPM In retrospect, we should have just not allowed comments in the first place.
21:22:18 WillPM No, we just deleted all of his stuff from the system.
21:22:27 WillPM And hoped that would make it clear that he wasn't part of the game.
21:22:31 NathanPM That was one of those "Let's see what people do with comments" things.
21:22:33 chippy2 were you expecting the aresstation forums to be used more than they were?
21:23:10 NathanPM The thinking was "People congregate on message boards for ARGs. We'll just give them message boards to use!"
21:23:15 WillPM Yes, although we probably shouldn't have. :)
21:23:36 WillPM It made it a little harder to get you to notice the puzzles in the forums.
21:23:43 WillPM Same with the main AS page.
21:24:02 chippy2 thanks
21:24:36 chippy2 erm, another question i had was what was with the static on the security cam stills - were they a puzzle
21:24:41 NathanPM Nope.
21:24:49 chippy2 heh
21:24:55 AudioVisualPMs Actually...
21:25:01 hawk hehe
21:25:05 AudioVisualPMs (kidding, they weren't anything)
21:25:11 chippy2 i spent loads of time on it
21:25:15 NathanPM Just trying to make it look more interesting.
21:25:17 ellipses Me too!
21:25:20 NathanPM Sorry!
21:25:25 AudioVisualPMs I'm so sorry for that
21:25:31 Oshovah Were there any puzzles we didn't catch on to?
21:25:35 ellipses That's part of the fun...
21:25:49 WillPM I think you got everything eventually.
21:26:14 chippy2 I had the impression that we forced the monkeys on you?
21:26:15 WillPM Although partly that's because our story was generally set up so that you /had/ to get the puzzles.
21:26:21 NathanPM The poem hex took a couple weeks.
21:26:23 ellipses What about the links on the sickness.html page?
21:26:37 WillPM That was an indicator that Charlie was lying.
21:26:41 WillPM Not a puzzle per se.
21:26:49 hawk ooooh
21:26:53 chippy2 so Charlie *was* a baddie?
21:26:58 NathanPM No, we loved the monkies.
21:27:15 ellipses So did we!
21:27:16 * Oshovah loves the mokeys too.
21:27:17 chippy2 we did too :)
21:27:28 AudioVisualPMs (Ian) Ook
21:27:29 NathanPM That was something you guys loved, so we did it more. Definitly an addition to the story.
21:27:29 chippy2 "bad karma, bad monkeys"
21:27:31 WillPM We were actually surprised more that you got /everyone/ to make a diversion
21:28:00 WillPM We expected you to let the monkeys loose or ask Mary to get the miners to revolt, but not both! And more!
21:28:08 NathanPM Re: Charlie. He really isn't a fan of the human race or the star children. I'm not going to say anything beyond that. :)
21:28:34 hawk so we did the right thing then! :)
21:28:37 * hawk highfives, er, anyone
21:28:41 Oshovah Hurray!
21:29:03 chippy2 well done to the voice acting sound btw
21:29:08 WillPM Hehe. There wasn't really a /right/ answer, but you what we hoped you would do.
21:29:10 AudioVisualPMs (Ian) Thanks :)
21:29:12 NathanPM You definitly did the option that resulted in the fewest casualties.
21:29:17 hawk were there alternative endings for if we'd chosen a different course of action?
21:29:19 WillPM We liked our characters too much to want to see them hurt.
21:29:23 chippy2 i was really put on the spot last week :)
21:29:59 chippy2 so what would have happened if the gun would have self-destructed?
21:30:25 WillPM Well, we're not /totally/ sure (that's why we needed the three day silence).
21:30:33 WillPM But Hanna would have at least been hurt.
21:30:42 WillPM And the station probably would have broken apart.
21:31:03 NathanPM People might have died.
21:31:24 ellipses And no chance of a sequel... We definitely did the right thing :-)
21:31:25 NathanPM Oh! Another thing you guys changed: Garith was supposed to be a one shot joke.
21:31:45 chippy2 i liked Garith :)
21:31:52 hawk he was great
21:31:53 hawk :)
21:31:53 WillPM Yeah, the post where he's first mentioned was really there to talk about the rabbi.
21:32:00 Oshovah Yeah, he was awesome.
21:32:00 WillPM But we dropped the rabbi and kept Garith
21:32:05 NathanPM And then never never told the rabbi's story.
21:32:19 chippy2 what was the rabbis story?
21:32:35 NathanPM No comment. :)
21:32:38 WillPM The rabbi's brother was going to take Hanna's role.
21:32:39 chippy2 hehe
21:32:48 WillPM So the rabbi would have been the Severn.
21:33:22 AudioVisualPMs Will has now completely destroyed the concept of "No Comment" ;)
21:33:22 chippy2 could have been interesting - more of a religous flavour to the story
21:33:35 hawk wow, so david wasn't supposed to be such a main character either then?
21:33:43 WillPM Nope, he was tied directly to Hanna.
21:33:49 WillPM That was going to be the back-story.
21:33:59 WillPM A story in the background, that is.
21:34:07 NathanPM He had something of an antagonistic relationship with Mary in the first drafts.
21:34:41 NathanPM Sort of a "If we get to do a season 2, he changes then." But you guys got it early!
21:34:51 WillPM Hey, I didn't tell any secrets! There's more to the rabbi!
21:35:16 WillPM So the rabbi got bumped back to a potential season 2.
21:35:28 hawk wow
21:35:42 WillPM There's still a lingering religious influence, though
21:36:02 chippy2 thats true
21:36:31 WillPM Which probably wouldn't be there except that the first draft included a rabbi.
21:36:52 ellipses So what was with the Esperanto?
21:37:23 hawk do anyu of you speak it?
21:37:25 NathanPM That was my idea.
21:37:44 NathanPM No.
21:37:50 NathanPM The esperanto is very terrible.
21:38:10 chippy2 what were your favourite moments
21:38:11 NathanPM I was using a dictionary. We just wanted a multi level puzzle.
21:38:19 WillPM I joked early on that the aliens should speak Esperanto.
21:38:29 ellipses It was very funny when we first found it...
21:38:39 NathanPM Favorite moments. Hmm.
21:38:50 WillPM Watching you solve the spiral text in the wallpaper was great
21:38:50 AudioVisualPMs (Ian) The first level being morse code *stabs Nathan*
21:39:00 WillPM Because so many of you were able to contribute to the solution.
21:39:03 * JoeUser (~joe@9e889ae.1e79b4c9.br.cox.net) has joined #aresPMchat
21:39:09 JoeUser oh :)
21:39:14 chippy2 thats true, was a good solve will
21:39:22 WillPM Previously, all our puzzles had been solveable by just one person.
21:39:49 WillPM So the solutions would sort of just appear out of nowhere on the Unfiction boards.
21:40:02 WillPM I also really enjoyed reading all the cover letters, resumes, and slogans. :)
21:40:04 NathanPM A lot of my favorite moments were comments you guys made. "Max Starvon." And also the crazy detailed resumes you guys sent us.
21:40:26 WillPM Oh, man. We laughed about Max Starvon and his Amazing Troglodytes for weeks.
21:41:06 chippy2 lol. i was origionally role playing as an astro-physistist hooker from australia :D
21:41:21 WillPM That first week, when Angela sent in a resume with a cover letter that included details from the future history we'd created.
21:41:40 WillPM Because until that point, we weren't sure if you were going to get it.
21:41:55 WillPM But you proved that you did, big time.
21:42:14 chippy2 well the space station around mars kinda pointed out that it wasnt present day :)
21:42:34 WillPM Hehe. That's true, but we did get some e-mails that were totally out-of-game.
21:42:40 WillPM Which was disappointing.
21:42:47 chippy2 bimey
21:42:51 WillPM So when you started responding in character, that really helped us out.
21:43:28 chippy2 did you have a backstory about the political / social situation in earth? it seemed kinda fascist
21:43:29 NathanPM The first thing that shocked me was when someone called that place in Austin. "Oh lord, we've caused people we don't know to call real companies! What have we gotten ourselves into!?"
21:43:47 WillPM Haha. That /was/ great.
21:44:27 NathanPM The backstory was pretty sketchy at first. Then we combinded it with a screenplay I was writing. You'll get a lot more of an idea about what's going on in earth
21:44:40 NathanPM in a season 2. ( Also give us money so we can. Heh. )
21:45:09 AudioVisualPMs PayPal Of The Future! ;)
21:45:16 WillPM One of our artists actually asked the same question, chippy.
21:45:32 WillPM We did some hand-waving and then latched onto Nathan's script, so we wouldn't have to do any more work.
21:45:40 hawk heh
21:45:48 NathanPM We created a bunch of "culture" stuff that was neet, but also didn't get to put it in.
21:46:42 hawk oh, another question - what happened to Jacob Jones? (or will we find out....later)
21:47:08 NathanPM Oh, yeah. Heh. About the dog/cow thing. That was a mess up on our part. We didn't do enough QA until, well, that point. Then we started checking EVERYTHING really close.
21:47:14 WillPM Jacob's safe. He was in an esape pod, after all. :)
21:47:30 ellipses Heh! I think you covered it well...
21:47:32 WillPM Yeah, that was my bad. I sent the puzzle to Nathan to test and he couldn't get it.
21:47:43 chippy2 ok. got to go. dinner time. someone post the full chat :) Good job on the game. was really really fun, and enjoyable to play, hope to see you in other ARGs...now youve time to play :) cu
21:47:48 WillPM So I went back and accidentally used the DNA sequence he'd used rather than the real one.
21:47:51 chippy2 thanks PMS
21:47:54 * chippy2 has quit (Quit: )
21:48:11 WillPM Which we didn't realize until you'd basically solved the puzzle.
21:48:23 WillPM So we had a couple of frantic hours trying to figure out how to fix it in-game.
21:48:37 NathanPM So Ohmega, our wonderful Deus Ex Machina, sent you all a message.
21:49:09 WillPM Yes, I highly recommend giving a character the power to hack into any system and send any message. It makes it easier to fix mistakes. :)
21:49:18 hawk hehe, did ohmega have backstory?
21:50:00 WillPM Oh, and while we're apologizing, sorry to our UK players who had to stay up until the wee hours of the morning last week.
21:50:18 NathanPM Sorta. She took the place of another character who did. But then we never used him.
21:50:32 WillPM We were originally going to have the finale on Friday, but we decided to move it back and didn't think to change the hour so that it would remain on the weekend.
21:51:07 ellipses Actually - it was a public holiday on the Monday - so that was fine!
21:51:11 WillPM Whew.
21:51:18 AudioVisualPMs That's good
21:51:37 ellipses But that explains Hanna saying Friday originally though...
21:51:55 NathanPM Yes. Someone forgot to change the message.
21:52:11 WillPM We tried to have two level to everything.
21:52:20 WillPM So either Nathan would write and I would send or vice-versa.
21:52:29 WillPM When we had one person writing and sending, bad things happened.
21:53:45 ellipses Were you happy with the number of people playing?
21:53:56 WillPM Oh, yeah.
21:54:06 WillPM I mean, we think /everyone/ should have played.
21:54:11 hawk hehe
21:54:18 WillPM But we were very happy with the users that we had.
21:54:54 NathanPM Seems it's a good ammount of people for a freshman effort.
21:55:14 WillPM And there are quite a few other ARGs running at the moment as well.
21:55:34 WillPM I'm glad that we got some new ARGers involved.
21:55:47 Oshovah :D
21:55:52 NathanPM We were quite shocked when people thought we were Orbital Colony. We'd never even HEARD of Orbital Colony.
21:56:23 NathanPM Yes indeed. We all got to learn about args together. That was nice.
21:56:29 ellipses Yep - you've got me hooked...
21:56:37 WillPM Hopefully, AS has whet people's appetites for space fare, so they can launch with a bang.
21:57:31 hawk so long as they're as well done as AS was :)
21:57:57 NathanPM Aw shucks.
21:59:16 JoeUser I thought the puzzles were very well done
21:59:48 ellipses I agree - they fitted with the story well
21:59:49 NathanPM I'm glad you thought so. We were pretty much running two days ahead of you all, especially towards the end.
21:59:53 WillPM Yeah.
22:00:08 WillPM We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to fit a puzzle into the story.
22:00:32 WillPM And at the beginning especially, we were worried that they seemed tacked on (since they were literally the last thing we were doing)
22:00:49 NathanPM A lot of conversations went like this: "I think we should do X." "Why the heck would that character use X?"
22:01:25 WillPM We got to use most of those puzzle ideas eventually, though.
22:01:42 WillPM They just took some more story explanation.
22:01:46 JoeUser who decided to use esperanto? ;-)
22:01:53 NathanPM Me.
22:02:09 WillPM A joke that found its way into the game.
22:02:46 NathanPM We tried to use as much humor as we did drama. Both stuff that was humorus for us, and (hopefully) you guys too.
22:03:02 JoeUser well I learned a bit about esperanto in the process
22:03:15 Oshovah And I learned Esperanto existed.
22:03:39 WillPM Oh, I just thought of a good puzzle example. We created a Cohen/Applegate backstory that explained why Mary got the email leading to the blackbox.
22:03:48 WillPM And that allowed us to have Chris post a similar message the next week.
22:04:20 NathanPM I did SO much research for this. Learned a bit of esperanto. Learned some stuff about penguins. ;-) Etc.
22:04:43 ellipses Oh yeh - the penguins!
22:04:46 JoeUser haha
22:05:07 NathanPM Had to show Max had something of a soft side there.
22:05:33 WillPM Yeah. Even thought most of the characters were jerks, we tried to show that they weren't totally horrible.
22:05:56 JoeUser oh, I'm curious about blackbird novelties
22:06:21 NathanPM That was a band of earth based mercenaries.
22:06:26 JoeUser what were the "statues of beasts of burden"?
22:06:49 NathanPM Grunts. Soldiers.
22:07:00 JoeUser ahh, ok
22:07:13 Oshovah Ah. Clever.
22:07:22 ellipses makes sense now!
22:07:42 NathanPM The antique was a scientist who was making the gas.
22:07:58 NathanPM There was something else, but I don't remember what.
22:08:06 JoeUser humidifier
22:08:06 hawk cunning
22:08:21 WillPM We had a lot of fun with the rhyming slang too.
22:08:28 WillPM Nathan didn't think you'd ever get it. :)
22:08:28 Oshovah I think the humidifier was the antique.
22:08:47 JoeUser oh, ok
22:08:56 ellipses Easier for UK players probably!
22:09:01 hawk yup :)
22:09:27 NathanPM Pretty much whenever I said "I don't think they'll get this..." you did within 10 minutes. And whenever Will said something was going to be easy, it was really hard.
22:09:42 ellipses although what was frank? :-)
22:09:51 WillPM We tried to average our expectations.
22:10:16 JoeUser sorry if this has already been asked, but what puzzles did we miss?
22:10:17 NathanPM It wasn't porn.
22:10:21 AudioVisualPMs Frank was food, I think. NOT PORN
22:10:28 AudioVisualPMs Heh
22:10:35 WillPM I liked Mary's response, though.
22:10:47 hawk lol
22:10:58 ellipses lol! Me too - might have been my personal favourite moment!!
22:11:28 WillPM She was just so... innocent and confused.
22:11:52 NathanPM You got pretty much all of the puzzles, Joe.
22:12:16 hawk and how do you guys spell Merzkeen?
22:12:20 AudioVisualPMs Like that
22:12:21 JoeUser yay ... what about the graffiti?
22:12:33 ellipses really? well that was a good guess then.
22:12:35 WillPM The graffiti was Beth's view of Charlie
22:13:21 WillPM We didn't mean to call the Star People Angellasi, though.
22:13:30 WillPM A syllable got dropped off the front when we recorded.
22:13:37 AudioVisualPMs (Ian) Er, heh, that's my fault
22:13:47 WillPM But we liked the sound of it, so we kept it.
22:14:31 ellipses Heh! That had me confused for a while...
22:16:17 ellipses Was Lisa ever intended to have a bigger part?
22:16:30 AudioVisualPMs (Ian) I left a letter out of the morse code
22:16:52 WillPM Yes, we planned to have Lisa and Simon run against each other for leader of the miners.
22:17:04 WillPM But the game was starting to run long, so we cut that short.
22:17:19 ellipses Ah - I figured that might have been what was going to happen.
22:18:08 * Tiberius_X (~your@cia.gov) has joined #aresPMchat
22:18:59 ellipses One more silly one then - terminal sticks?
22:19:03 NathanPM Hey Tiberius :)
22:19:22 NathanPM Oh yeah. That was a cool idea we didn't get to use much.
22:19:42 JoeUser shoot, I gotta run ... thanks so much!
22:20:14 JoeUser it was a lot of fun :)
22:20:24 NathanPM Basically, people could "paint" computer consoles on the walls or pretty much whatever. Some of that "culture" stuff we didn't get to talk about much.
22:20:27 WillPM Glad you enjoyed, Joe! We had fun doing it.
22:20:33 NathanPM You're welcome, Joe :)
22:20:33 Tiberius_X #socold is back up and running
22:20:41 WillPM Yeah, we had some awesome renders of that too.
22:20:48 * Tiberius_X is now known as Tibby|BRB
22:21:01 * JoeUser has quit (Quit: )
22:21:01 ellipses Ace idea! Would have liked to see that
22:21:43 WillPM Maybe we'll put up galleries. Rory sure did enough work.
22:22:01 * Tibby|BRB is now known as Tiberius_X
22:22:02 ellipses That would be good - a nice little bonus for us all :-)
22:22:02 NathanPM Rory did the work of 10 men.
22:22:21 WillPM He did. My favorite was the wallpapers, which he just e-mailed to us out of the blue three weeks in.
22:22:23 AudioVisualPMs (Rory) Eh, maybe 9.5
22:22:53 ellipses They were good - I use one at work!
22:23:08 WillPM We were worried that if we just put them up, you'd think they were a puzzle. :)
22:23:17 WillPM So I had to wait to put them up until we had a puzzle that could use them.
22:23:25 hawk nice :)
22:24:21 WillPM I've got to go. Thanks again, everyone!
22:24:30 WillPM You have my e-mail if you have any other questions or comments.
22:24:37 ellipses No - thank you!
22:24:39 Oshovah Thank you! Good luck on any future projects!
22:24:51 hawk thanks Will!
22:24:55 * WillPM (~Rosencran@1c3781d3.3f38bee0.res.rr.com) has left #aresPMchat
22:25:52 ellipses Think I'm going to have to go too - so another big thankyou to all the PMs!
22:26:00 NathanPM I probably should too. Any last questions? And, of course, we will answer emails. I might start posting on unfiction too now. :)
22:26:08 NathanPM Thank you ellipses!
22:26:31 Oshovah Thanks, Nathan!
22:26:31 hawk it's been great. thanks guys, and stick around! :D
22:26:57 * hawk has to go work :(
22:27:04 * You are now known as hawk|busy
22:27:41 AudioVisualPMs (Ian) Well, I guess we'll head off too. I definitely plan on sticking around. Thanks, all, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
22:28:10 Oshovah See you around, I guess. Thanks for everything!
22:28:19 * AudioVisualPMs has quit (Quit: )
22:28:44 NathanPM Thanks again, everyone who played. Keep eyes out for AS2. But it probably won't be called that. And won't show up for... many months. Still! :-) Later!
22:28:58 Oshovah Bye! Good luck!
22:29:43 * NathanPM has quit (Quit: )

Nice run

Wainamoinen@forums.unfiction.com — Fri, 06 May 2005 06:56:14 +0000

but like all good things, it comes to an end.

Three Day Limit Exceeded

ellipses@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 05 May 2005 19:02:31 +0000

hEAr.html has been updated now after the three-day countdown.

Garith? Garith Yung! If you are reading this message, something must have happened to me. Try to get to the communication console of surface base.

There are five audio files. The first is Garith as he's flying away from the station, and there seems to be some Esperanto too: "La spoco stoco estee nia ambassadoro", I think, for anyone who cares to translate it. The second appears to be sent by someone on an escape pod flying down to Mars, although the voice has been masked and it's hard to make out what they're saying at times. Next, there's the announcement David Severn makes while Ares is being recaptured, but it fades out at the end followed by a period of apparent silence. Last is Mary Haynes recording herself as the events in the station are happening, as well as a goodbye and thank-you message from Hanna.

[CHAT]Final Showdown #saveearth

Russell@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 05 May 2005 00:52:01 +0000

Final Showdown??

Oshovah@forums.unfiction.com — Sun, 01 May 2005 18:02:30 +0000

Just thought we should start a seperate thread seeing as we have finished the puzzle, for all the plans so far to be collated...

[UNSOLVED] Controls To The Gun -puzzle

Center Lot@forums.unfiction.com — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 06:13:15 +0000

Hanna E-mail

Center Lot@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 18:49:04 +0000

Dear Friends,

Well, my charge woke up. His name is Garith and all he’ll say is that he
was trying to get his hat out of his ship. They thought he was trying to escape
and they beat him pretty badly. I gave him about twenty-five stitches and reset
his shoulder. And then, well, I sat down and waited for whatever was going to
happen... to happen.

And then, the next morning, someone else was brought in. I think you have all
been communicating with someone named Ohmega? Well... I’ve met her. She
didn’t get beaten half as badly as Garith for shooting off her mouth but
it was bad enough that the brought her here, which is just where she wanted to
be. In fact, Garith had given her the idea. She knows that I’ve been
asking for your help and came right here the only way she could think to.

(Sorry I’m just using pronouns here. She won't tell me her real name and
I'd feel silly writing Ohmega.)

She has a plan. She needs me David Severn for it. In turn, we need your help.

The first thing we need, what *I* need, is for you to get that gun pointed away
from earth. Ohmega says that it’s going to fire, no matter what, Friday
evening. But if we can get it pointed somewhere else, we won’t be killing
everyone on Earth.

Ohmega hacked into Tim’s personal files. She’s found the controls
for the gun. She even found a way to connect to it remotely in order to shut
the security down. Unfortunately, none of us can figure out what the security
codes are. That’s the first problem we have. The second problem is that
she thinks we won’t be able to save a new command remotely. That means...
I’m going to have to get down there physically.

Ohmega has found a bunch of Tim’s notes and thinks you can use them to
remotely unlock the gun’s controls. She has put all of his notes about
that on... she wants me to type hEAr. I assume you will know what that means.

But if I’m going to get to the physical controls, I’m going to need
some help. I’m going to need a distraction! Do you think you can talk
someone on the station into providing a distraction? Sweet-talk somebody into
helping and maybe give them a few ideas on what sort of distraction to give?
The network here has been locked down but Ohmega thinks that she can get email
working again. Could you ask people for help? Be careful who you talk to,
though; I’m not really sure who would be inclined to help us.

Well, anyway, I’m going to make a break for it about twenty minutes before
the final launch, so that's when I'll need the distraction. I should get there
ten minutes before the launch, which shouldn't give them time to change it
back.(and who’s going to suspect the doctor after all? Ha ha.) Once
there, I'll commit the changes you've made through the web interface. Ohmega
should be able to rig up some direct communication when I get there. I’ll
let you know when we figure that out.

While I do that, David’s going to confront Tim. He thinks that if we can
take him out, those guys in the gas-masks won’t be big on tearing the
place up.

Hopefully, after that, we can talk much more freely. If this plan backfires...
well, best not to think about it. Thank you, everyone, for all of your help. It
is much appreciated.

Email from Characters

Wainamoinen@forums.unfiction.com — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 20:53:55 +0000

[SOLVED] Simons secrets - Files

Wainamoinen@forums.unfiction.com — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 06:50:03 +0000

Catching up cos im so far behind, and following the trail i visited
http://www.aresstation.com//hEAr.html
which appears to have been updated. notice the last entry:

Simon's secrets are locked by:
+ - vowels + numbers

Simon Miller's files then...
mars/moon/2 + card/king/10 - vowels/5 + numbers ?

edit: note the letter "R" for the King...
edit: change to solved

Tim's taken over...

Wainamoinen@forums.unfiction.com — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 06:38:32 +0000

Uh oh. It's Tim! :shock: At least I think it is?

http://citizens.aresstation.com/?q=node/69

Not really sure if he is the Merzkeen, or not. But whatever he is, it's not good...

Slogan winners

djrazz@forums.unfiction.com — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 00:05:37 +0000

:shock: roxygrrl275 and Alias Node now have a new icon that says winner over (the regular picture of) Mars with a... crown? Anyway, go take a look.

I wonder if that's just for fun or opens up new doors (or should I say: rabbit holes :wink:). Anyway, what do you think?

-Wainamoinen

Star People

Russell@forums.unfiction.com — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 18:59:05 +0000

[UNSOLVED] Jacob Jones Transmission

Wainamoinen@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 05:29:54 +0000

Start of a new thread to discuss Jacob Jones Transmission (from Chin Mae Park's files)

For starters, the notes playing in the background are C, C, C#, C, C, D#, C, C, F

Presumably these will translate into a code that Jones has to input into the keypad

[SOLVED] Chris Applegate Login

Wainamoinen@forums.unfiction.com — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 07:03:46 +0000

Mary's latest post is obviously telling us to look in Chris' files. (Not to mention her previous post - no wonder Chris is frustrated :))

He says Beth's music is the key.

I tried the obvious (Chorus, Chorus.gif, Chorus.mp3). Then I thought about how he mentioned "key." The piece starts out in the key of E flat, then changes to D flat at the end. So I tried:

Eb
Db
Eflat
Dflat
EFlat
DFlat
eflatdflat
EflatDflat
EFlatDFlat
EFLATDFLAT
EbDb

None of which worked. I'm out of ideas for the moment. Anyone?

Edit: marked "solved"