Quote from DouglasQ on August 11, 2012, 7:44 pm

EDIT (8/27):
The following announcement was posted in the Steam group around 5:00 PST, as promised. The TL;DR is that it's a new game called Electric Sheep with levels designed by Mevious, and they need your support when Project Greenlight launches on August 30th to help get the game on Steam!

Quote:

Hey guys. First things first, let me introduce myself. My name is Ross Friedberg and I designed this Shepherd Company ARG and have been running it for the last several weeks. I'd like to heartily thank everybody who's been involved in any capacity, especially the PTI mappers who helped us start the game and the people on TWP who solved it together. So what's the point of all of this? I'm glad you asked!

For about a year now, I've been working on a new game with my partner in crime, Ben Bryant, whom many of you know better as Mevious. For those who aren't familiar with Mevious, he's currently the only Portal 2 PTI mapper who has been spotlighted by Valve. He also has a number of other full-length Portal mods under his belt, namely Portal Pro and Rexaura; if you haven't tried these out I highly recommend them.
The game itself is a side-scrolling puzzle platformer called Electric Sheep. In it, you play a man who wakes up to realize he doesn't know where or who he is. He quickly finds this odd little robot that seems to be linked to his predicament. He must guide his new robot buddy and himself to the exit of each level as he unravels the mystery of who he is and what his involvement with The Shepherd Company is. At first, the game uses all the standard tropes: levers and pressure-sensitive buttons to toggle doors, ladders, and deadly spikes to avoid.
Eventually, he learns that the robot can be programmed using a simple circuitry interface. For example, an early program might connect the "Facing Right" condition chip to the "Traverse Ladders" behavior chip, which would tell the robot to go up and down ladders, but only when it's facing right. Things get trickier and more devious as more conditions are found, then those conditions are combined with "and" and "or" chips, or counted with counter chips and basic numeric chips (e.g., climb every second ladder you reach when facing left), or connected to additional behaviors, like "Push Blocks" or "Use Teleporters." That said, one of our primary goals is to have the game be accessible to non-programmers, as long as they're willing to get into the puzzle game mindset. We will be slowly introducing the "programming" concepts and the new chips, and making sure that when we introduce something new, we teach it to you before moving on.
In broad strokes, I'm the lead programmer for the game and Mevious is the lead level designer, which means you can expect to be scratching your head regularly until you finally reach that satifying "aha!" moment. We plan to have roughly 100 levels in all over 5 worlds, and the difficulty will be similar to Mevious's Portal levels, so there will be plenty of play time in there if you choose to do all the levels and find all the collectables.

So, what's next? Well 3 days from now on August 30th, Valve is going to launch Project Greenlight. For those who haven't heard of it, Project Greenlight is Valve's way of letting the community have more say in what games make it onto Steam. This is especially helpful for indie developers get through Valve's arcane and under-staffed curation process, which only a small percentage of games make it through. What we're asking of you is to help us. If you think this game sounds up your alley, on August 30th, vote for Electric Sheep and tell your friends to do so, too; I'll make another announcement providing a link and more information once Project Greenlight launches and we get Electric Sheep's page up.

Oh, and I think I promised you guys a present Everybody in this group at the time of this announcement will get a free copy of Electric Sheep when it's released, regardless of whether we make it to Steam or not. However, if we do make it onto Steam, everybody will also receive a free additional copy of the game to give to a friend!

EDIT:
I went to the location and found a thumb drive containing this zip and something secret. The zip was decoded by Random, which led to The Shepherd Company's Presents steam group.
Everybody who joins this group will receive a "own-of-a-kind gift" on August 27 at 5pm PST, and members are encouraged to invite anybody else they like.

EDIT:
The countdown has run out, and two things changed. First, this image of a sheep appeared:

with the alt text "O Romeo, wherefore art thou parking?" and title "There is more to this sheep than meets the eye." It was discovered that this sheep had a hidden message:

Quote:

47.6157
-122.333
8/18
6:25pm PDT

We believe this refers to this parking lot and that somebody needs to be there Saturday at 6:25pm PDT to continue with this ARG. It is unknown what will happen if we fail to do so.

Along with the sheep, some code was added:

Code: Select all

   // 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;

Benny ran this and got "32123332223993212333322321" and Random noted that it roughly follows the piano keys for "Mary had a little lamb" and that the letters were grouped like a phone pad. Typing the numbers into a touch tone phone plays "Mary had a little lamb" and more or less confirms that the "her name" referenced here is probably "Mary."

EDIT (8/14):
Random has sent TRS an email, presumably giving the name "Rob" and the movie "Blade Runner." TRS's response was:

Quote:

Let them know: It has truly begun.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/94591457/8152019.html

The page has a countdown and a cryptic message

Quote:

ti mI NG wI lLso oNBe ever yT hI Ng Sow ILL LO c ATi oN

I think it says "Timing will soon be everything so will location," but the spacing and capitalization is weird. I guess this is another puzzle.

EDIT:
What's known:
It started as a PTI collection featuring new maps from Zivi7, Mothalius, Mevious, ColorCubeMan, Mathey2009 and Motanum. It is currently unknown what level of involvement these people have.
Nathanle1406 discovered that each of these new maps contains a secret room featuring a bed. Using the bed initiates a dream sequence which includes a QR code that, when flipped, takes you to a backup of The Shepherd Company's website.
On the site, there was a fake music file that became

(Note that this image is slightly truncated due to the forum software. Click it to see the full image)

The letter says:

For participants.
Congratulations on making it this far.
Let it be known. The Shepherd Company is not what they pretend to be. At first glance, their products seem miraculous, they take every bit of hard work you need to do and they automate it. But really, they are not doing it for your benefit, they are trying to turn you into mindless lazy sheep.
Once we are used to our new lifestyle, the Shepherd Company will be able to control every aspect of our lives and we wont be able to stop this.
Even with their current schedule, they wont be able to srart their plans for sixteen years. Since it is 1996 now, that means their world domination will begin some time in 2012. But there is still time if we can build an army of like-minded individuals to topple this regime. I can't trust just everybody, though.
You must first solve my riddle embeded into this website. Figure out my name and email it to shepherdco96@hotmail.com. Only then will I tell you how we can truly proceed in averting this disaster.
You can also support the war effort by letting others know and getting them involved.
You don't have to do this alone.
-The Real Shepherd.

The red letters spell out "The first letter is R".

TRS has been contacted several times, the first time, Nathanle1406 asked whether "Caleb" was the correct name. TRS responded:

Quote:

Congratulations on being the first to make it this far, Nathan. Good things will come to those who follow my path.
However my name is not Caleb. Keep searching, there are clues within clues.
-TRS

The second time, Nathanle asked whether the name started with r and was three letters long. TRS responded:

Quote:

Bit by bit you are finding the key.
Wise are you to stop at three.

The third time, Mumbles presumably asking whether TRS's name is "Rob". TRS responded:

Quote:

Guessing at random will only incur stricture,
Now, in addition, you must name the motion picture

The circuit on the page was eventually discovered to be a reference to the second letter. Running G through the circuit (because G has the shepherd's cane from the hidden invitation and the third clue) produced O. (Thanks to Benny for writing a program and doing a lot of analysis)

The third clue was a mysterious, out-of-place letter from TRS which had a lot of stilted language. Certain words at the beginnings of lines were spaced differently, like "Great Scott" "replicate" "decked" "Los Angeles" "batty." "Between Alien and 1984" and "first letter" are also at the beginning of lines, so they might have been slightly spaced, but it's hard to tell. These clues all refer to Blade Runner (Great Scott = Ridley Scott, replicate = replicants, decked = Rick Deckard, Los Angeles = location of movie, batty = Roy Batty, antagonist, between Alien and 1984 = when movie was released). Random realized the last line sounded weird and that it referred to the first letter of the movie's name, giving us B.

Thus, the name Rob and the movie "Blade Runner" were named and the ARG moved to the next phase (see above). Some were skeptical about "Rob" being the right name due to it being previously guessed (see above) but now that I look at it, TRS never actually said that it was wrong, just that he didn't want guesses without proof.

Original post:
I was playing Zivi's new map when I noticed it had a weird description linking to a collection it's in. Every map in the collection has the same weird description, and they appear to be new maps from Zivi, Mothalius, Mevious, ColorCubeMan, Mathey2009 and Motanum. The whole thing seems weird, but I can't figure out what's going on. Does anybody have any idea?