Valve released a strange update to Portal on March 1st that included one new Steam achievement and 26 audio "transmissions" to be found in-game. It turned out to be a massively impressive puzzle hinting at details for the next iteration of Portal.

Some of the transmissions are clearly Morse Code recordings and others as SSTV encoded messages. Many members across the Half-Life community already took it upon themselves to break these messages down and get to the dirt of it all. The process involved using old modems to dial up Valve's Bulletin Board Service and reveal a collection of ASCII images and text with words from Aperture Science founder Cave Johnson dated from 1973. It's a pretty impressive viral campaign that as some theories go, mark March 11th, the date Gabe Newell will receive his Pioneer Award at the GDC this year with some significance in the decoded messages.

See Kotaku's full story here.

[UPDATE]: It looks as though there has been yet another update today, simply labeled: "valuable asset retrieval." Once again, the community already looked into it and posted a video of the change in-game. Valve changed the ending of Portal! Watch it here.

Now it's getting exciting!

Join in on the discussion in the forums here.

One of our more enthusiastic members, Muhnay has started a new mapping challenge. Something quick and easy for those with little time to devote these days. -There's even a prize! If you're interested, be sure and stop by to show your enthusiasm!

You can read more about it in the forums here.