#PotatoFoolsDay ARG

[metacide]

So the average workday of a Valve employee starts at 8am PDT (not PST, we're on Daylight time) so whatever is coming starts an hour after they start work. Do they need last minute code revisions? Do they want people on site to put out fires? Is it simply a convenient time? What does it mean?!

[BigBiker05]

Theory Crafting baby!

VIEW CONTENT:

[Buzzy Beetle]

>One more potato to get before I have them all!
>It's the Amnesia DLC playthrough
>I do NOT do horror ANYTHING well
>"Well, I think I can swing it..."
>Watch a video playthrough to soothe my nerves
>"Ok, I think I can do it."
>Play along with the walkthrough
>Am still absolutely terrified
>Die RIGHT at the LAST obstacle because I'm too slow
>As per ARG criteria, the game kicks me out with no saves immediately on death
>It is now 2am
>I have class at 8am
>Absolutely terrified
>Can't sleep
>Worst of all, have no chance to try again and get my potato before the timer runs out
>My face: ;_;

[Boss Llama]

Sorry to hear that, Buzzy

@Biker - I've been more interested in the missing letters than the present letters myself, and have been trying to figure if there's anything to them. While that image is a clever one, the issue would be that the missing letters are R, L, and W, rather than r, l, and w. Still... clever

[Will T.]

http://www.aperturescience.com/glados@home/

GLaDOS needs everyone to play the Potato Sack games to boost her power enough to unlock the game early. Everyone fire up whatever games you have!

[Boss Llama]

http://www.aperturescience.com/glados@home/

GLaDOS needs everyone to play the Potato Sack games to boost her power enough to unlock the game early. Everyone fire up whatever games you have!

Quick! Where's an idle program?



I kid... I kid...

But yeah, we ain't going anywhere at the current rate - barely 5,000 people playing any of the games (as of this post), with more than half being on KF.

[Buzzy Beetle]

I rushed home and powered through the campaign in Amnesia after damning that horrid abomination to the abyss and managed to get my gold potato 30 minutes before zero hour. I only skipped a work period and I'm doing the work now, so I don't see that being a bad thing...

I also did a bit of a projection (I know there's one on the GLaDOS@Home site, I don't trust it) and if we assume that we complete 1 of those bars an hour (we completed the first bar within an hour, so I based the projection off of that) we're looking at a total processing time of 86 hours (down from the 108 hours the original launch date has).

This is also incredibly inaccurate since there have been amply more cycles dumped into the launch timer since that projection was made. Also am aware that most people don't get home until 5pm or something for dinner, so the processing still has plenty of time to hit the prime time.

It amuses me that, from the hardware survey, Valve knows what kinds of machines we run and probably made their target cycle number based upon that. Clever devils.

[Boss Llama]

Each game appears to be tracked seperately, up to a certain point. The community seems to be rallying to complete Wonderful end of the World first, as that one appears to increase rapidly.

Get to it!

[Bronze Fox]

I would be super excited about this if I owned Portal 2, but I don't so...

[Ixtab]

So... I don't know all the details on ow this is all computed or whatever... I am also so very tired at the moment... But yeah... I've been playing at least two games at once since the first counter stopped (running defense grid and rush at the moment)... Will both games count for the 'computations completed' or for 'challenge status' at the bottom, or for the bars for the individual games themselves..... or will it only count one at a time, I wonder?

Either way, it is pretty fun to keep an eye one DG one one side, while I figure out puzzles in Rush on the other side. heh.

[Boss Llama]

I've been sitting here rumbling away on WEotW, trying to get an A+ on all levels.

Most of them I got the first day I played, last week, but there are two levels that I just cannot seem to do it: Cafe Internets, and Word Forge - I got A's on them, but they both have so many chokepoints and such that I can't seem to pull off the A+. Bleh, at least it keeps me busy and in-game!

----edit----

Of course, having said that, I just turned around and A+'d Word Forge with like 20 seconds left. Go figure!

[Will T.]

We're at 10% as of right now (~4:12PM Pacific). At this rate we will definitely not be seeing a release today, but if the rate we're moving at keeps up we'll have Portal 2 Monday morning sometime (EDIT: New estimates show that it might come as early as Sunday...!). A release a single day early still means an entire extra day to enjoy it.

Has anyone figured out how progress is actually determined for each of the individual games' progress bars? Killing Floor has consistently had more players all day than any of the other games according to the site, but TWEotW is well over 50% done while KF has made virtually no progress whatsoever. What gives?

[MrBlah]

I Valve Time.

[Buzzy Beetle]

Skimming the Valve ARG IRC channel has led me to make the following conclusions about the GLaDOS@Home Page

- The Number of Current CPUs is the number of players in that game. This number can go up or down
- The red progress meter shows culminated playtime. This number will only go up.
- Due to the very different progress when considering player contributions and progress meters filled, it appears that each game's total completion time is weighted (by total owners?)
- ARG users are trying to complete TWEOTW first to see if there is a 100% meter bonus.
-The projected launch timer is for the OFFICIAL launch date, it does not consider user playtime contributions.

Other things of note
- It is still under speculation if running multiple instances of games increases the playtime
- There is a LOT of wild speculation about what the "Axillary Power" /potato count meter does. Either way, it's increased by 20k since noon today (it is now 7:30pm). Popular speculation is that it`s some kind of multiplier

I think that's about it for now.

[Boss Llama]

Been watching GLaDOS@Home, and despite finishing up two of the games, it doesn't appear to have had any affect on the projected release time - it's still 5:30 AM Pacific Time on Tuesday, same as it's been since the start.

At the present rate, of finishing one game per day, with the others increasing at their present rate, the ARG wouldn't be completed until well AFTER that time, making the whole early-launch thing moot. Hmmm.