Central projector morse

This page is about the projector in Central, in the control room.

This texture extracted from effects/central_video_1.vtf. This version is not animated.

When the VHS tape is inserted into the projector and turned on, this animated texture appears on the screen and a faint morse message plays in the background.

The video is of the shadow of a fan projected onto a concrete wall, and what may either be two written L characters, or two doors with light projected through them in the background.

Cracking the code

Note that the morse code is audible in game and the spectrogram is only used here to help decode, and not required to discover the code.

Spectrogram of the audio used for decoding the Morse Signal, as the signal is clearly audible in the audio.

This is the raw morse, transcribed manually:

-.-- --- ..- -.-. .- -. -. --- - ..-. .. -. -.. .-. .. --. .... - .- -. ... .-- . .-. --- .-. - .... . --.- ..- . ... - .. --- -. -... ..- - .. ..-. -.-- --- ..- -.-. .- -. ..-. .. -. -.. .... .. -- -.-- --- ..- -.-. .- -. .- ... -.- -- .- -.-- -... . .... . --. .. ...- . ... -.-- --- ..- - .... .. ... .--. .-.. .- -.-. . .. ... -.-- --- ..- -.-. .- -. ... . . .- ....

Including long and short pauses (with short pause considered as simple spaces between words), the transcription is

YOU CAN NOT FIND RIGHT ANSWEROR THE QUESTIONBUT IF YOU CAN FIND HIMYOU CAN ASK
[long pause]
MAYBE HE GIVES YOU
[long pause]
THIS PLACE ISYOU CAN SEE AH

Taking the missing spaces between words as line breaks, this becomes

YOU CAN NOT FIND RIGHT ANSWER
OR THE QUESTION
BUT IF YOU CAN FIND HIM
YOU CAN ASK
[long pause]
MAYBE HE GIVES YOU
[long pause]
THIS PLACE IS
YOU CAN SEE AH

What does it mean?

This seems to link in with the "right answer, right question, right person" problem.

Who is "him?"
🔑 Is it possibly used as an encryption key?