Shepherd Company ARG - Electric Sheep on Steam!

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nathanle1406
41 Posts
Posted Aug 14, 2012
Replied 21 minutes later
Nice! Good job, i never would have thought rob just because he already replied to that saying not to guess. I guess we will have to wait then, location and time is everything? Hmm.. Location migt be a problem, what if nobody lives in the right spot? im too tired to solve stuff right now though...
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tomc
1 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 6 hours later
Had a quick read through this after playing Pasture and seeing the comments. A couple of thoughts:

The countdown expires at 20:19 UTC (the title of the web page backs this up). Blade Runner is set in November 2019 so there may be a parallel to draw here. No idea what though.

Team Fortress 2 is releasing the final part of its Mann vs Machine update today and the Day 2 MvM update mentioned the film Alien a lot and MvM is all to do with robots.
The fake music file also talks about a war effort and getting others involved to help you - i.e. co-op.
The ARG countdown timer expires around the time that the MvM Day 3 update should appear as well.
This Team Fortress link could also be a figment of my imagination.

The circuit diagrams and capitalisation/spelling of the countdown message are still a mystery to me. Will keep thinking...

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DouglasQ
17 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 7 hours later
tomc, the circuit has already been solved. We had to run G through it since it has the shepherd's cane next to it to get the letter "O." I guess I should update that section of the OP.
Just three hours away from the countdown hitting zero, and we still don't know what's up with the capitalization and spacing...
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nathanle1406
41 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 42 minutes later
I doubt its related to tf2, unless We need to join some server or something at a certain time. Actually that might be close, these letters cant be some hidden ip can they?

edit:I'll be ready to check all clues so far as soon as that timer hits 0. although i feel like it will just go right to 24 hours, and keep repeating..... in that case i'll do it when it resets to 24 hours....

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Benny
15 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 2 hours later
If the site is not replaced, the countdown will start to count negative time (you can tell by the javascript code in the source), so consider reloading!

If the lower/uppercase is considered zeroes and ones, we would have 5 byte:
29 70 5 167 217
if inverted (lower = 1, upper = 0):
226 185 250 88 38

maybe 4 of them are an ip, I tried to ping some combinations, but with no luck

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tanger2b
70 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 1 minutes later
Says 9 minutes left
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nathanle1406
41 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 7 minutes later

Benny wrote:
If the site is not replaced, the countdown will start to count negative time (you can tell by the javascript code in the source), so consider reloading!

If the lower/uppercase is considered zeroes and ones, we would have 5 byte:
29 70 5 167 217
if inverted (lower = 1, upper = 0):
226 185 250 88 38

maybe 4 of them are an ip, I tried to ping some combinations, but with no luck

IP and port? perhaps? 1 minute left, i'm going to be disappointed if nothing happens

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nathanle1406
41 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 1 minutes later
// Soon you will have a zip.
// Its password will be her name.
for (int abc = 2; abc < 6; abc++)
cout << abs(4 - abc) + 1;
for (int def = 3; def < 6; def++)
cout << 3;
for (int ghi = 4; ghi < 7; ghi++)
cout << 2;
for (int jkl = 5; jkl < 8; jkl++)
cout << (int)pow(3.0, (jkl/2 - 1));
for (int mno = 6; mno < 10; mno++)
cout << abs(8 - mno) + 1;
for (int pqrs = 7; pqrs < 10; pqrs++)
cout << 3;
for (int tuv = 8; tuv > 5; tuv--)
cout << tuv / 2 - 1;
for (int wxyz = 9; wxyz > 6; wxyz--)
cout << wxyz - 6;
8/18, so in 3 days we get a zip, the pascode is the result of this script.
edit: zip folders are female?
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tanger2b
70 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 1 minutes later
NEGATIVE NUMBERS WOOOOO!
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Benny
15 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 2 minutes later
facts for the new page:

  • title says "8/18"... a date => in three days?
  • image alt text says "O Romeo, wherefore art thou parking?"
  • image title says "There is more to this sheep than meets the eye."
  • image url is https://dl.dropbox.com/u/94591457/images/818.png - same 8/18 reference
  • the c++ comment says "Soon you will have a zip. Its password will be her name."
  • the (c++) code executed gives a number:
    32123332223993212333322321
    link

no more hidden data

EDIT: guess, in three days he will upload an encrypted zip file

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nathanle1406
41 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 3 minutes later
wow. good job benny. i dont speak "Ye Olde English" what does wherefore art thou parking mean

EDIT: CODE IN THE SHEEP its hard to read, give me a minute

ok, on the sheeps fur is written

47.6157
-122.333
8/18
6:25 pm PDT

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Benny
15 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 4 minutes later
dunno exactly, but the original Shakespeare quote is "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?", her name in this case would be julia. I'm not sure about the parking though..

EDIT: a yeah, you're right, you can see it by dragging the picture
EDIT: looks like geo coordinates and a time spec

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nathanle1406
41 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 1 minutes later
great. we know the sheeps name. that was a lot easier then rob's name

so.. now we have some more numbers. a date, and a time

August 18th, 6:25 pm PDT.

also, this is the first image that is a png, all the other ones so far were gifs.

more, the sheep is just a simple clip art sheep. if that means anything (it doesn't, it just means the people at Shepherd Company were to lazy to draw their own sheep.)

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Benny
15 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 4 minutes later
the geo coordinates point to seattle:
http://goo.gl/maps/UZyOm

far away for me
EDIT: but maybe its something about the address (1801-1843 Terry Ave) or the building (http://www.pregodonnell.com/)

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nathanle1406
41 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 2 minutes later
its possible to change your computers settings to make it look like you are in seattle right?

edit: with the code, what could it mean? all digits are 1-3, base 3, not base 2. i'll try to convert it to base 2 or 10 for something useful

code is 32123332223993212333322321 for those who missed it

edit: first glance was clearly wrong. that is obviously NOT base 3... there are 9s in there

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Benny
15 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 5 minutes later
btw. PDT is the current time zone of seattle (pacific daylight time)
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nathanle1406
41 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 12 minutes later
Oh, duh, the parking lot next to those coordinates. Can anybody be there?

Oh, and benny, you're in germany? Your google maps link is in german i think. (that or i screwed up my phone language again)

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Benny
15 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 7 minutes later
Yes, Germany ^^

but I don't know if we really have to be in this place.. maybe he will pin a point of interest on google maps or something, because else the ARG could take a dead end if no one here lives in seattle

EDIT: wherefore art thou parking... now makes sense -> the parking lot
I start to fear, someone in fact has to be in place

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Random
171 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 29 minutes later
Here's the numbers from the code with breaks between each variable.

3212 333 222 399 3212 333 322 321

I searched the individual numbers, and came up with a blogspot blog about 5-finger piano playing. So I tried it out, and if you use the numbers as fingers on a piano, you play the song "Mary Had a Little Lamb". I believe "Mary" will be the name for the zip file.
(The 399 should really be 355, but it doesn't make too much a difference.)

Also, the letters are grouped like they are on a standard phone-pad, but I can't think of anything relevant for that.

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nathanle1406
41 Posts
Posted Aug 15, 2012
Replied 1 hour later
I'm kinda confused on the location, do we really have to meet someone there? i was hoping for something simpler, like a location-sensitive file that could be tricked or something. not making us go out of our way in our lives to go to somewhere.

oh, and Random, that is a great find. whats with the 9's though? i know you say they are supposed to be 5's, is that only if you are playing with 1 hand? or what? its odd something so specific like that is off by 2 digits.

If we do have to go to the location, whoever goes should get video, just so they aren't having to recall from memory. if they dont have a camera, they should at least take notes.

If nobody can make it, what happens? do we just get a big GAME OVER sign? perhaps a troll face? this will be interesting.....