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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » Old News & Rumors
DarkSpore.com
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rempas
Veteran

Joined: 15 Jan 2008
Posts: 85
Location: the Netherlands

 		DarkSpore.com
spore sequel
Ok, You might totally not be interested in this. But it seems ARG-ish and I wanted to know your opinion on this.

A while ago someone posted on the Spore forums they had briefly seen the darkspore site. (Darkspore being the rumored Spore sequel) and posted several images that he downloaded there. link to thread
The thread was started by TOMBk, a Spore player. But not very active on those forums. He only started one thread. (The one I'm talking about) And all of his 24 other postings were about said sequel.

After this post the site www.darkspore.com directed you to a blank white page.

Yesterday, I was curious and looked up the darkspore page. And as of yesterday the site is a black page. with a single 100x100 png in the upper left corner.

Looking at the source code the first thing that you notice is the text:
Webmaster note: Do not redirect to Spore.com. Darkspore is… Darkspore.

furthermore there is a coded part there, starting with the text 4TOMBk
Afterwards there's a lot of code.
Another player (DVDMaster) came with the following trick:

If you "view source" on the blank html page, you see that there is a large html comment that has rows and rows of text, this text is the graphic. It has been encoded in a format called "base64" that uses alphanumeric codes to transform the binary file into text. This was one way of sending binary files via email or newsgroups before those things supported attachments (yes, this gives you an idea of how old I am).

You can use programs to convert that base64 text into a binary file. When you do that and give the file an jpg extension, web browsers or graphic viewing programs can display the file.
You can do this conversion yourself:
1. View the source of that page.
2. Copy the base64 text.
3. Go to http://webnet77.com/cgi-bin/helpers/base-64.pl
4. paste the base64 text into the text box and click the button to convert.
5. It will give you page where you can download the binary file. Download the file and name it "image.jpg".
6. Then open the file.

which gives you the following image:



An image in the style of the images posted by this TOMBk in the first place.

I don't know it this counts as an ARG, a game. A fake
(I searched the forums for it so I know it's not a TROUT)
I hope you give me your opinions on it.

PostPosted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 11:19 am
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vapor
Entrenched


Joined: 03 Jun 2008
Posts: 1188
Location: Dallas, TX ya'll

 		Hmmm...well it's weird that they would post the hex in the source. Definitely a puzzle. Would be cool if they went ARG on it.

For the first Spore game, they had a "Dance Contest" of which I was the winner. I used the pre-release of the spore creature creator to make a dancing spore and uploaded it to YoutTube as part of the contest. Here is my video if anyone cares:



YouTube: Link

Would be cool if this turned into another contest. My prize winnings were a trip to Washington DC, hotel accomidations at the Mandarin Oriental, a 52" Plasma TV, A Bose surround sound system, and a $1,000 Schmidt-Newtonian computer controlled telescope. The prize package was valued at ~$8,000. EA was really cool, too. They upgraded me to an extra ticket so I could bring my daughter.

My only question I guess is if DarkSpore is an actual sequel or another expansion. "Darkspore is...Darkspore" does seem to suggest an actual sequel.

PostPosted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 11:54 am
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MrToasty
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 4310
Location: Des Moines, IA

 		Interesting. The site is registered to EA and is hosted the same place as spore.com and other ea spore sites.

PostPosted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 12:15 pm
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Gregoriev
Entrenched


Joined: 29 Jul 2008
Posts: 1217
Location: *Looks around* By my computer?

 		Seems like proper timing, seeing as this this popped up recently.
_________________
Playing: Whatever I come across that I find interesting.
Played: Dharma Wants you, Project Abraham, The Shadow War, Alpha Agency, all kinds of other games.
Lurking: See statement the first and add EVERYTHING.

PostPosted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 12:17 pm
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vapor
Entrenched


Joined: 03 Jun 2008
Posts: 1188
Location: Dallas, TX ya'll
MrToasty wrote:
Interesting. The site is registered to EA and is hosted the same place as spore.com and other ea spore sites.


Yeah I ran a whois, too. They're arguing on the spore forum about weather it's legit so I am about to show them.

PostPosted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 12:23 pm
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MrToasty
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 4310
Location: Des Moines, IA

 		Yeah, looking at IP Neighbors says it's legit:
http://www.my-ip-neighbors.com/?domain=darkspore.com

PostPosted: Thu Jul 15, 2010 12:26 pm
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vapor
Entrenched


Joined: 03 Jun 2008
Posts: 1188
Location: Dallas, TX ya'll

 		The source code has been updated. No more mention of 4TOMBK

Now there is some malformed binary:

Code:
01110011 0001 01100110 0001 01101101 0001 01100001 0001 01110100 01110100 0001 01110100 01100110 0001 01110100 01100001 0001 01110100 01101001 0001 01110011 01100110 0001 01110011 01101001 0001 01100110 01110100 0001 01100110 01100001 0001 01110001 01110100 0001 01110001 01100110 0001 01110001 01100001 0001 01101101 01100110 0001 01101101 01101001 0001 01101110 01110100 0001 01101110 01100001 0001 01100001 01110100 0001 01100001 01100110 0001 01100001 01101001 0001 01111010 01100110 0001 01111010 01101001 0001 01101001 01100001 0001 01110100 01110101 01110100

00101011 01110101 01100110 01110011 0001 00101011 01110101 01110001 01110011 0001 00101011 01110101 01110011 01110011

00101101 01110100 01110100 01100001 0001 00101101 01110101 01110101 01101001 0001 00101101 01110101 01110001 01110100


Also, pi to several places and the words HELP US at the end of the source.

PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 12:47 pm
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MrToasty
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 4310
Location: Des Moines, IA

 		New image via base64 (XMIT1).

ETA aside from 3.14, I don't think that is Pi. Contains ellipses and the numbers don't match.
binary1.png
 Description   
 Filesize   107.05KB
 Viewed   155 Time(s)

binary1.png

PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 12:56 pm
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natas
PHP Ninja


Joined: 06 Oct 2007
Posts: 3177
Location: Northwest Indiana

 		got rid of the "0001"'s in the binary and got this... no help though. hmm.

sfmatttftatisfsiftfaqtqfqamfmintnaatafaizfziiatut+ufs+uqs+uss-tta-uui-uqt

PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 1:38 pm
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MrToasty
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 4310
Location: Des Moines, IA
natas wrote:
got rid of the "0001"'s in the binary and got this... no help though. hmm.

sfmatttftatisfsiftfaqtqfqamfmintnaatafaizfziiatut+ufs+uqs+uss-tta-uui-uqt

Saw that too. Trying to see if using the 0001's as line breaks makes any more sense of it.
Code:
s
f
m
a
tt
tf
ta
ti
sf
si
ft
fa
qt
qf
qa
mf
mi
nt
na
at
af
ai
zf
zi
ia
tut

+ufs
+uqs
+uss

-tta
-uui
-uqt


PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 1:50 pm
Last edited by MrToasty on Sat Jul 17, 2010 1:59 pm; edited 1 time in total
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vapor
Entrenched


Joined: 03 Jun 2008
Posts: 1188
Location: Dallas, TX ya'll
MrToasty wrote:
natas wrote:
got rid of the "0001"'s in the binary and got this... no help though. hmm.

sfmatttftatisfsiftfaqtqfqamfmintnaatafaizfziiatut+ufs+uqs+uss-tta-uui-uqt

Saw that too. Trying to see if using the 0001's as line breaks makes any more sense of it.


Ditto. Maybe the binary added to the Base64 will help refine the images. Possible using 00001 as "/"

PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 1:59 pm
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MrToasty
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 4310
Location: Des Moines, IA

 		Could be. Also just noticed with the above, 26 lines before the + and - rows. Substitution?
ETA - also only 10 unique letters used.

PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 2:04 pm
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vapor
Entrenched


Joined: 03 Jun 2008
Posts: 1188
Location: Dallas, TX ya'll

 		MrToasty, which Base64 converter do you use? Copy/paste into either http://webnet77.com/cgi-bin/helpers/base-64.pl or http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp crashes my browser when the text string is too long. Might be a problem on my end but was wondering if you knew of a non-browser based program that'll do the job.

PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 3:35 pm
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MrToasty
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 4310
Location: Des Moines, IA

 		I used webnet. Not sure I've seen or used an offline one.

PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 3:42 pm
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vapor
Entrenched


Joined: 03 Jun 2008
Posts: 1188
Location: Dallas, TX ya'll
MrToasty wrote:
I used webnet. Not sure I've seen or used an offline one.


Thanks. I found one that doesn't crash my browser http://www.opinionatedgeek.com/dotnet/tools/base64decode/

PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 3:46 pm
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