unforum

[Gantry]

What to happen on August 24th?

[Urnreg Talst]

Newbie trout suggestion no doubt

[twofivefour]

Wild speculation here -

After thinking about the use of the word "axon", I checked the definition on the Wiki. And, according to it, when axons are bunched together they create nerves.
If you notice, there are multiple points in a few cities. This leads me to believe we should be mapping these not as a single straight line, but as some kind of nervous system, that branches out and spreads itself across the country.

[Dorkmaster]

Talst, I know this idea has been suggested in the past, but no one has yet to make an animated "connect the dots" thing in flash or otherwise. Xnbomb did make an unanimated one, but it did kind of get jumbly and hard to pick out specific lines due to the sheer number of them. I say if you know flash and are capable to make this animation, please do so. I'd love to see it and I know others would too...

[NuMetalGamer(unregistered]

Spec here but you have to think, what motive would Bungie have to do this? There has obviously been a lot of work put into this, and what would Bungie see out of it? Lots of people were saying that if they are handing something out it would mean the end of this ARG. Well what if its the begining. Maybe they have been working on a game in secret, and this ARG has been the prolouge to it, or maybe even a beta. Not another action game, but a story driven game based on Halo history. And maybe these coordinates are leading towards copies for the "beta testers." Who knows maybe they made the rest of the ARG pay only and want to reward us for our hard work. It would kinda ruin the feel of it, but there has to be some kind of money behind this, especial if Microsoft is involved. (few day lurker, first time poster)

[thebruce]

...Steps up to the podium
...takes the mic
...test...test...

I have news for you dorkmaster, I've created a nice scripted coordinate plotter! It runs through the sets of coordinates in order repeatedly, at any speed, at any size, even displays all the points within the bounds of the coordinates...

go take a look:
Coordinate Plotter - spread the word

it currently plots the coordinates that are the most recent listed on the links.html (as of about 12:30pm today)

Thank you...
...bows

[Dorkmaster]

THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE FOR THEBRUCE!!! RAVE REVIEWS!!! YAY!!!!

edit - Now to be impolite... (ahem): Is there any way to overlay that plotter with a map of the united states, so we can get some idea of whether that matters? Right now I'm not understanding the graphical significance.

[TacticalChunder]

to the thoughts of the gps locations being close to the players. when the original points came out, one of them was less then a half mile from my apt, and i thought that was cool. So later on when we all got those reply emails from Dana, i sent a quick little blurb back saying that i was glad she was ok, blah blah blah, and if it made her feel any better, she's really not in this alone, and told her about the one location.

Now with the updates, my bethesda md location is no longer on the list

Is this a polite way of the PM's telling me that we're not supposed to go to the list, or am i just part of the noise?

[thebruce]

well I haven't plotted the gps coordinate locations, but it appears from that coordinate list that the coordinates now spread over the world... does the bottom left corner not look like North America? If so, then the top left would be South America (think y=0 being the center of the map, same with x=0) and the bottom right being a part of Asia...

I could probably alter the code to display the uppermost, leftmost, lowermost and rightmost coordinates, just so there's a box we could overlay onto a world map... but that's more work, and I'm AT work

[PlayerOni]

I think it's time I said a few more words here. Like I said, I'm a lurker, but sometimes you just have to speak up.

Let's face it: the probability of there being a real event at each of these places is unrealistic. I said it before and I'll say it again, it would make no sense either in-game or out of game. In-game, the AI has no way to manifest itself to reach out and drop an envelope somewhere. Out of game, it would be nearly impossible for Microsoft to send couriers to each of these places, not to mention the threat risk of just dropping something off (although I'm sure they have the money to bribe the gov't). Also, if indeed they were giving out stuff, they would need to have vendor licenses for each individual location, and to get a vendor license you have to tell them what you're giving away. You think someone wouldn't leak that info?

Now, consider this: the coordinates posted have had locations in the sea, twice. Could this be a simple oversight? Sure, typos are really easy to come up with. I'd like to think the people behind this are a bit more thorough than that, though. Now, obviously they didn't match these coordinates up with a map, otherwise they'd have figured out their mistakes before posting them, right? So, what this means is that the actual locations themselves hold no significance. It's the numbers that are important. Think about it: if they locations themselves were what mattered, don't you think they would have made sure each set of coordinates was right? From an in-game perspective, the AI would hardly know what places to move to (hence why some locations are nowhere useful), but is likely using some sort of algorithm to plot points. That algorithm is our key.

Nobody was picking up on this, which is why the coordinates were refined, and there are now times posted with each coordinate. Once again, slim possibility these times are relevant for events. Yes, it could happen, but why would they have an event twice in one day on the same street? These times were given to show us what we were blind to see: there's a pattern here, and we must follow it. These numbers were generated by an algorithm of some sort, maybe to form a pattern, maybe not. What's important is that we can't focus on the locations themselves, but must rather focus on what the numbers mean.

Please, I urge you to think of this logically. I understand how it's easy to hold onto ideas that would seem great in theory but hold little weight in reality, but sometimes you just have to give up on things.

---Player Oni

[Dorkmaster]

[thebruce]

well actually looking closer, the coordinates are in north america, and it's Asia in the upper left (upside down), but I'm not positive on what the far right coordinates are; Australia I believe... looks like Melissa is increasing her axon range... anyone know if any of those asia coords are in China?

[msekolpsu]

[Dorkmaster]

[msekolpsu]

OK, I'll give you the phone call. That is a distinct possibility, just not very puzzle oriented.