I very much enjoyed working on your puzzles, 13. They kept my mind active when I was going through some tough times dealing with a failing hip joint.

Thank you very much for the hard work to put into the game for all of us to enjoy.

There are a few unanswered questions about the Joker story that I have for you.

First of all exactly what was "The Tower" ?  I had a few possibilities I came up with, including a web blog for hard core gamers I ran across one day or a reference to a Tower I ran across in the Prima guide. What did you have in mind ?

Were you trying to talk Rare into allowing us to make a trip to the "ascension" island construct that was never released into the game as part of the Joker event ?

I had a problem getting three of the  "ley lines" to converge ... I managed to resolve two of them (although factoring the outgoing frequencies still proved to be a problem. however the one I marked Mara 3 (on page 9 of the unidentified Broadcast thread) ran of in the direction of tabor Park. What was that all about ?In one of the Pamela Target images an area of the image was marked as anomalous .. Was that a easter egg reference to the Morpheus Sim ?  Was it desgned to be RP'ed out some way ? If so what happened with that ?

Did the matrix characters assigned to various data items on the Pamela images have any significance. If so what did it mean ?

Finally, What was the encryption method used on the primary node. I know the first pass was base64. what did you do to generate the numbers ?

Best Regards,

Con

Conrac wrote:

 

Finally, What was the encryption method used on the primary node. I know the first pass was base64. what did you do to generate the numbers ?

 

 

   Yeah, I would love to see the primary node decrypted.

Wowwww....

I must say, I was never involved in any kind of live event in MxO, but I did take note of some "underground LESIG stuff going on" - a post about the conclusion of the Watchmaker story here, those "unidentified broadcast" posts, interesting bluepills on MySpace, etc.

that stuff always had a kind of "obscure" character to me, it felt like "some mysterious stuff going down... out there", but I didn't fully get what was going on, or what it was all about in the first place.

though alintrigued about that, but either didn't ask, or got only vague answers from others; everyone else seemed to know what was going on and was discussing some puzzles all around the internetz, while I didn't get jack.



I'm glad to be understanding it all before the end - a specific questions about the Joker(s), though:

What was Paul Chadwick's involvement in those storylines (he did mention it in some interview, or Fain Faire, whatevah, and said he couldn't give away anything)? Didn't he once write an RP blog from the perspective of some bluepill, who encountered a "faceless clown" somewhere on the street?

Would be intrigued to get to know about that (as, of course, all the rest as well).




Your multi-tasked, significant involvement and contribution to MxO is nothing short of amazing.

Binary guy rulez!!!!!!

Conrac wrote:

First of all exactly what was "The Tower" ?  I had a few possibilities I came up with, including a web blog for hard core gamers I ran across one day or a reference to a Tower I ran across in the Prima guide. What did you have in mind ? Were you trying to talk Rare into allowing us to make a trip to the "ascension" island construct that was never released into the game as part of the Joker event ?

"The Tower" as it was vaguely mentioned in some of my writings, particularly Dr. Rajlich's journals, was a sort of private and underground club where redpills, Exiles, and even some members of the bluepill underground would meet to exchange information. The name "The Tower" is applied to the place where these people meet, although the location would change every time they meet in order to preserve the safety of the group.  So The Tower could be anywhere in the city at any particular moment in time, although most likely to be found in some seedy underground location like a basement or underground bar.  Rajlich writes about The Tower as a place where he would go to exchange information about 991. I'm not sure where else I might have referenced it.

Players made the assumption that it referred to the "ascension" island construct on their own and turned it into a red herring. There was never a connection to that construct as far as I was concerned.

I did actually write The Tower into the BA52 story as a place where players had to go and meet with random exiles played by LESIG but we'll see if that ever bears fruit.

Conrac wrote:

I had a problem getting three of the  "ley lines" to converge ... I managed to resolve two of them (although factoring the outgoing frequencies still proved to be a problem. however the one I marked Mara 3 (on page 9 of the unidentified Broadcast thread) ran of in the direction of tabor Park. What was that all about ?In one of the Pamela Target images an area of the image was marked as anomalous .. Was that a easter egg reference to the Morpheus Sim ?  Was it desgned to be RP'ed out some way ? If so what happened with that ?

Lets just say that while I do make mistakes from time to time, this was not one of them. It was a very subtle tie to the continuation of the 991 story, but the people who were aware of it on the 991 end never met up with the people who were aware of it in-game.

This is something I'll explain at the very end. I think that when Keep Your Eyes Open ends, I will make a master timeline that explains everything chronologically from the origins of 991 through the end of this July.

Conrac wrote:

Did the matrix characters assigned to various data items on the Pamela images have any significance. If so what did it mean ?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I'm guessing you're asking about the significance of the images and text in the Joker nodes.

To write the Joker nodes, I really just put myself into the twisted state that allowed me to RP 991 and then just wrote stream of consciousness about whatever came to mind. Then I added excerpts from my girlfriend's psychology textbooks, Sun Tzu's Art of War, various articles about the future of AI, some pieces of art that I seemed to suit 991's interests. The result was a 88-page word document of 38,000 words. I added some player artwork and tried to connect relevant text with it. I also raved about various characters from the Matrix universe and speculated on their true intentions.  I really loved the twisted images of the Oracle that I did with my basic photoshop skills at the time. There was some stuff about players that was either from previous Joker encounters or intended for future ones. And I also threw in a few interesting forum threads that nobody probably noticed. One about whether machines could lie and... I forget the other one. I was really trying to add a lot of player recognition to the nodes. I wanted people to say "Hey, that's me!"

Umm... I'm not sure if I've really answered your question... Moving on...

Conrac wrote:

Finally, What was the encryption method used on the primary node. I know the first pass was base64. what did you do to generate the numbers ?

This one has always been a sore point for me and it was simply a case of me creating layers and layers of puzzles and then having no extraordinary content to put at the top. When it came down to the most extreme level of information that the Joker would have access to, I didn't have a whole lot to offer. As a LESIG member, I really didn't have any story information beyond a normal player. I was able to give away lots of info pertaining to my own story, but the value of that information was only proportional to the puzzle-solvers interest in my story. Since Rare didn't have any special insider information to offer me (the Oligarchs would have been a nice touch), I was forced to just leave an unbreakable code to represent the intel that 991 inevitably would have had about those particular characters.

In reality, it was just random strings of numbers.

Later, I thought about relating it back to the story and having those numbers be relevant for cracking "Pandora's Box", but since I never had a chance to make it, I never had to worry about it.

Anyways, many apologies for any lost time spent trying to crack a random string of numbers.

zeroone506 wrote:

interesting bluepills on MySpace, etc.

Didn't he once write an RP blog from the perspective of some bluepill, who encountered a "faceless clown" somewhere on the street?

You reminded me of something else I worked on years ago that I had forgotten.

Back during the MySpace craze, I made MySpace pages for two bluepills, Chad Williams and his girlfriend. I happen to forget her name and can't find it. Their pages and blog entries provided some perspective on what it was like to be a bluepill. For example, Chad's girlfriend and her friends went to Club Succubus for Halloween and her friend went into the back with a man and never came back. She wrote about her agitation trying to find her friend and the unhelpfulness of the police. Then there was a sudden transition where she never mentioned the incident again and started talking about her new friend.

Chad Williams lived in an apartment above Debir Court and wrote a series of blog entries about a homeless man in the courtyard without a shirt (who happened to be TheWatchmaker) and then after the Watchmaker Finale, Chad noticed a strange man making noise in the courtyard. When he looked at the man, he looked back and Chad could have sworn he had no face, alluding to The Joker's supposed facelessness behind his signature bandana.

Their MySpace pages also had lots of photos of them attending the Piece of Blue Sky concert together, which was also around that time.

zeroone506 wrote:

What was Paul Chadwick's involvement in those storylines (he did mention it in some interview, or Fain Faire, whatevah, and said he couldn't give away anything)? Didn't he once write an RP blog from the perspective of some bluepill, who encountered a "faceless clown" somewhere on the street?

Would be intrigued to get to know about that (as, of course, all the rest as well).

Paul Chadwick had no real involvement with my story, although I recall the incident you mentioned. I think it might have been at the SOE Block Party in San Diego where Paul Chadwick did an interview. One of the players asked him if he was responsible for the Joker character who had recently attained fame on all 3 servers. I think I recall Chadwick giving some cryptic answer like you mentioned "I wouldnt want to give anything away". Bonus points if anyone can find a recording of that, I'd love to have it posterity.

Anyways, after hearing him provide some vague recognition for me, I got his email from his blog and sent him a full overview of what material I had produced for the Joker storyline at the time. I never got a response, but he must have read it and liked it because the next issue of The Sentinel had a personal ad that directly quoted the first line of Doctor Rajlich's "Tier 1" journal: "I must be saying obsession is a terrible thing." More bonus points if someone can link to that issue of The Sentinel.

10011 wrote:

Conrac wrote:

Did the matrix characters assigned to various data items on the Pamela images have any significance. If so what did it mean ?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I'm guessing you're asking about the significance of the images and text in the Joker nodes.

To write the Joker nodes, I really just put myself into the twisted state that allowed me to RP 991 and then just wrote stream of consciousness about whatever came to mind. Then I added excerpts from my girlfriend's psychology textbooks, Sun Tzu's Art of War, various articles about the future of AI, some pieces of art that I seemed to suit 991's interests. The result was a 88-page word document of 38,000 words. I added some player artwork and tried to connect relevant text with it. I also raved about various characters from the Matrix universe and speculated on their true intentions.  I really loved the twisted images of the Oracle that I did with my basic photoshop skills at the time. There was some stuff about players that was either from previous Joker encounters or intended for future ones. And I also threw in a few interesting forum threads that nobody probably noticed. One about whether machines could lie and... I forget the other one. I was really trying to add a lot of player recognition to the nodes. I wanted people to say "Hey, that's me!"

Umm... I'm not sure if I've really answered your question... Moving on...

Yeah I guess i could have phrased that better, but the genesis of the Nodes was interesting background as well.

I was asking about the Matrix font characters appended to the various data tags in the Pamela target images.

You're pretty good. Hope you're able to continue using your talent through some other medium.

Conrac wrote:

10011 wrote:

Conrac wrote:

Did the matrix characters assigned to various data items on the Pamela images have any significance. If so what did it mean ?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I'm guessing you're asking about the significance of the images and text in the Joker nodes.

To write the Joker nodes, I really just put myself into the twisted state that allowed me to RP 991 and then just wrote stream of consciousness about whatever came to mind. Then I added excerpts from my girlfriend's psychology textbooks, Sun Tzu's Art of War, various articles about the future of AI, some pieces of art that I seemed to suit 991's interests. The result was a 88-page word document of 38,000 words. I added some player artwork and tried to connect relevant text with it. I also raved about various characters from the Matrix universe and speculated on their true intentions.  I really loved the twisted images of the Oracle that I did with my basic photoshop skills at the time. There was some stuff about players that was either from previous Joker encounters or intended for future ones. And I also threw in a few interesting forum threads that nobody probably noticed. One about whether machines could lie and... I forget the other one. I was really trying to add a lot of player recognition to the nodes. I wanted people to say "Hey, that's me!"

Umm... I'm not sure if I've really answered your question... Moving on...

Yeah I guess i could have phrased that better, but the genesis of the Nodes was interesting background as well.

 

I was asking about the Matrix font characters appended to the various data tags in the Pamela target images.

Oh. No, those were just there to add the feeling of something Matrix-y. Clearly those glyphs were used a lot in the films with no real significance and I continued with that. Although I think in a few instances I put minor messages in them as easter eggs.

Entropi was great. I enjoyed interacting with her in secret and finding you sneeking around here and there.  You're stories were always above and beyond and on great scales with twists and turns.

I thought your stories were great but I couldn't be involved with them because they frustrated me too much.  I was pretty miffed to find out you go afk with a running macro while we stood around for hours trying to figure out just the right thing to say to get a response.  There was no one home! lol

I was there when the watchmaker was fixed and was taken out by the Agent and was impressed with the folks that helped you out because I knew it must've taken a lot of patience.

I interacted with the joker on vector a few times, he was completely insane and very suicidal lol

Would You have anything to do with those mysterious Morpheus Sim HEX Codes?