UNKNOWN ARTIFACT: Signal Fomat Decrypted?

Hazara · May 5, 2015

Maybee DavidB likes Clutch? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE0CPvEJXdo

MadDogMurdock · May 5, 2015

Is the sound variation due to different UAs or to the UAs being in different places?

It'd be worth recording one and then jumping a 1000ly and recording the same UA again.
Maybe the signal is like a homing beacon.

I have to say I'm struggling to hear anything that is clearly binary.

Ben_BigBen · May 5, 2015

Clearly a homing beacon, I hope you didn't bring it back to inhabited space - they'll come looking for it !! and if it's a homing beacon it'll be broadcasting it's current location - so I concur with Mad Dog

My idea is that the pattern in the sounds relates to stars/black holes/landmarks and the distances between them - denoting a straight line for one co-ordinate for each phrase in the "message" to be able to identify a point in space.

Riedquat · May 5, 2015

I thnk the sound is just something that sounds 'Alienish', nothing more to it.

If anything needs to be worked out, it will be through a method that is accesible to the masses, otherwise it would induce whining from the crowds that dont have the required knowledge.

I fear that is the route you have to go down when you make a game that appeals to a mass audience.

silence please · May 5, 2015

And here's an alternative approach - instead of speeding the audio up, shift the pitch up (transpose upwards) while maintaining the same playback speed.

Something like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/opekevrqtwjhq7g/UA_transposed.mp3?dl=0

based on the original recording from: http://www.digitalscream.org.uk/audio/unknown_artifact_audio.mp3

Sounds rather more data-like and less tuba-like. Back to RL work now.

digitalscream · May 5, 2015

MadDogMurdock said:
(1) Is the sound variation due to different UAs or to the UAs being in different places?

It'd be worth recording one and then jumping a 1000ly and recording the same UA again.
Maybe the signal is like a homing beacon.

(2) I have to say I'm struggling to hear anything that is clearly binary.

(1) - All the recordings we have are by me, dropping it in the same place. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to get on this again for a few days - sorry, guys. Also, I'm in a Vulture so a quick 1000ly dash isn't exactly on the cards

(2) - There are two distinct tones in groups of 7 - one low, one high (which we've interpreted as 0 and 1 respectively). You can hear it at normal speed, but it's far easier (and quicker) if you speed it up 2-4 times.

For those of you talking about number bases, using octal etc - I can't see that's any more than an irrelevant distraction. 4 apples is 4 apples in any base - it's just a representation of a real-world number. As it is, we're already operating on the assumption of base 2; no need to convert to another base unless it's on the way to something else (eg 7-bit ASCII).

The header discovery is a good one. If it does indeed indicate a sequence, then that's awesome progress; it also means that we're on the right track. I'll do some more digging on the other files...

Starf · May 5, 2015

Hazara said:
Maybee DavidB likes Clutch? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE0CPvEJXdo

nope, I think this is the one, there is binary solo @ 2:50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpe1R6veuBw

OrLoK · May 5, 2015

Hello there

Just FYI, it may not be a homing signal or an S.O.S.

It could be a warning...

remember those leathery egg shaped objects?

I say we just ignore it and carry on RES site farming.

Discretion is the better part of valour and all that.

Rgds

LoK

Renegade Roach · May 5, 2015

Philip Coutts said:
I have absolutely no idea what is going on in this thread. I feel like Father Dougal from Father Ted after reading that.

You're not the only one.

[video=youtube;dS12p0Zqlt0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS12p0Zqlt0[/video]

digitalscream · May 5, 2015

Can somebody check these at some point for me? I've been through all the sequences we have (ignoring the first one from the video, which is only a partial sequence). The unknown_artefact_audio_long.mp3 is the first one, then UA 1..5.mp3.

011
100100
0010010
1001011
0100101
0110011
1101010
0011010
100101
0110101
0110110

00100
100100
0110101
0100100
1001011
1100110
1010010
1010110
0011001
0110011
0110110

010011
0101011
1011001
0100110
0100101
1001010
1001001
0101011
001001
1100100
1010110

010
11011
100100
011011
110010
010110
010011
100110
0110101
0101100
0110010
1100110

01100
101001
0101100
0011011
1011001
0010010
0010100
0100110
011001
1001011
1010110

00110
0011001
001100
0011010
1010110
0010011
0110110
1001101
1001100
1001011
101001

01101
011010
010101
0101011
1001001
0110010
1010110
101010
0110011
0101001
1101001

I'm not convinced about my results, because there are an awful lot of 6-bit numbers there. However, if we assume that the first entry in any sequence is the header...we have 2, 3, 4, 6, 12, 13 and 19. That means I either missed the first entry off when I recorded a couple of them (unlikely, given that all except one have the same number of entries), or it means we have at least 19 sequences to record.

Berty Dastard · May 5, 2015

It's obvious - it's a video message

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts6Y-3FVhSc

Earthman · May 5, 2015

aws357 said:
I ran a custom python code on the binary matrix, and obtain a serie of three numbers decimals. Wondering if it could be ascii, this is what I get after conversion.

Code:

T#_hE_A___ns #|"||r|__{\ç +|#||§|_|)ç| =|__#i@_/s/# 'd##|#|/!/_? <<#$|_|____| $#%##ù##?#&# +###[#_\#-{"

Seeing a pattern, I ran another pythons script to clean all the gibberish.

Code:

_ _ ___ | || |__ \ | || |_ ) | |__ _/ / | |/ /_ |_|____|

Mmmmmh. Still does not make any sense at all...

42... well all we need to do now is look for the restaurant at the end of the universe

Slopes off to get atlas

EdzUp · May 5, 2015

Forty two is that all you got to say for seven and a half million years?

KiraNerys · May 5, 2015

digitalscream said:
Can somebody check these at some point for me? I've been through all the sequences we have (ignoring the first one from the video, which is only a partial sequence). The unknown_artefact_audio_long.mp3 is the first one, then UA 1..5.mp3.

011
100100
0010010
1001011
0100101
0110011
1101010
0011010
100101
0110101
0110110

00100
100100
0110101
0100100
1001011
1100110
1010010
1010110
0011001
0110011
0110110

010011
0101011
1011001
0100110
0100101
1001010
1001001
0101011
001001
1100100
1010110

010
11011
100100
011011
110010
010110
010011
100110
0110101
0101100
0110010
1100110

01100
101001
0101100
0011011
1011001
0010010
0010100
0100110
011001
1001011
1010110

00110
0011001
001100
0011010
1010110
0010011
0110110
1001101
1001100
1001011
101001

01101
011010
010101
0101011
1001001
0110010
1010110
101010
0110011
0101001
1101001

I'm not convinced about my results, because there are an awful lot of 6-bit numbers there. However, if we assume that the first entry in any sequence is the header...we have 2, 3, 4, 6, 12, 13 and 19. That means I either missed the first entry off when I recorded a couple of them (unlikely, given that all except one have the same number of entries), or it means we have at least 19 sequences to record.

That's the coordinates for the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location, mystery solved

Extreme_One · May 5, 2015

Iori said:
We all know what "3" means.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tWPYwK0L7I

Half-Life: 3 confirmed?

OrLoK · May 5, 2015

Hello there

As anyone considered it may be a countdown?

Rgds

LoK

silence please · May 5, 2015

OrLoK said:
As anyone considered it may be a countdown?

Yeah, David Levinson did but it got buried in some thread.

digitalscream · May 5, 2015

OrLoK said:
Hello there

As anyone considered it may be a countdown?

Rgds

LoK

By all means try to find a logical way of inferring that from the data we've got

glynie · May 5, 2015

Can someone link me to the original audio? I'd rather start from scratch and check it out myself.
Edit: Nevermind, I found it on the Reddit page, sorry.

Baleur said:
FRONTIER, can you PLEASE fix the forums so line breaks WORK?

I've noticed this too. For me line breaks format correctly in all browsers (Opera, Firefox, Google) except IE. Have you tried using a different browser?

digitalscream · May 5, 2015

glynie said:
Can someone link me to the original audio? I'd rather start from scratch and check it out myself.

I've noticed this too. For me line breaks format correctly in all browsers (Opera, Firefox, Google) except IE. Have you tried using a different browser?

It's all on my server:

http://www.digitalscream.org.uk/audio

The first one (unknown_artifact_audio.mp3) is just the audio from my video that PC Gamer picked up - it's useless, because I recorded it before I realised that we needed the extended sequence; therefore, it's only a partial with five entries. The others are more complete.