Glyph Study

[nightcrafter27]

*PLEASE NOTE: I DID NOT COUNT THE DUPLICATE D SYMBOL IN THIS STUDY*

   I have seen everyone obsess over the super tri, di, and mono glyphs. Not that that is a bad thing. By all means, I'm probably wrong. But, is there something special in the symbols of Glyph A and B?
   To start, I have decided to recreate the symbols by plotting them on a grid. (I will be referring to my spreadsheet in this report) I have used the missing arks in the circles as a down orientation.
   THE NUMBERS
   Bungie loves numbers. So, do the symbols have some mathematical significance? But of  course. The number of squares in each symbol (circle not included) are 15, 20, 15, 16, and 18. Add them up, and you get 84. But we're not done. 84/12=7.  There's a clue. Also, the largest symbols, B, nicknamed sword by my friends and I, and D, fits in a 7*7 grid.
   CODES
   The symbols could be translated into binary. If the last bit (7-7) is left off, you get 6 characters per symbol (49-1=48/8=6). That would leave us with a 30 character message. The only problem is how to read it. Use the blanks as 0's or 1's? Rows or Columns?
   A-E; Rows, blanks as 0's:
00010000 00100000 11100001 01110011 10000010 00010100/00111000 01110000 11100111 01110011 10000010 00000100/00000000 10001000 10100111 01110011 10000010 00000100/ 00010000 00101000 01100111 01110001 10000010 10000100/00000000 10001000 11100111 01110011 10001010 10000000
   A-E; Rows, blanks as 1's:
11101111 11011111 00011110 10001100 01111101 11101011/11000111 10001111 00011000 10001100 01111101 11111011/11111111 01110111 01011000 10001100 01111101 11111011/11101111 11010111 10011000 10001110 01111101 01111011/11111111 01110111 00011000 10001100 01110101 01111111
   A-E; Columns, blanks as 0's;
00000000 00000100 11100111 01110011 10000010 00000100/00010000 00100011 11100111 01111111 10000010 00000100/00010000 10100000 11100000 01110011 10001010 00000100/00010000 00100000 01000111 01110011 10001010 10000100/00010000 10101000 11100001 01110011 10001010 10000100
   A-E; Columns, blanks as 1's;
11111111 11111011 00011000 10001100 01111101 11111011/ 11101111 11011100 00011000 10000000 01111101 11111011/ 11101111 01011111 00011111 10001100 01110101 11111011/ 11101111 11011111 10111000 10001100 01110101 01111011/ 11101111 01010111 00011110 10001100 01110101 01111011

Which is all Gherjsz.

Anybody have any ideas?

[Imppa]

Ah, I remember you posting this in the Bnet group. Well, I answered myself already, so I just quote myself:

It's just to make it look cool.
If I just could say this to every find we get...jk.

On the side note, nice to see a "new" member Welcome aboard!

[Dunder Moose]

Good stuff Nightcrafter!

I wonder how comparing those glyphs with the J banners might stack up?  I'll have to do that when I get home tonight.  If they are similar patterns it might mean that the Covenant had someone in Jotun Corp helping them find the ark!

[ColdGlider]

For those who were as confused as me at first:

In the spreadsheet, NightCrafter mapped the glyphs onto a 7x7 grid, and then assigned each pixel the value of one.  Adding up all pixels for five different glyphs, he obtained the value 84, which is a multiple of 7.

He then provided a color-coded distribution map of the pixels among all five glyphs.  It had a small error which I corrected (it erroneously added to 86, not 84.)

Finally, he pointed out that 12/4 = 3 and 4+3=7.

I don't really see where the 12 and 4 come from in relation to the glyphs.  Am I missing something?

There is big problem with this analysis, though- it's missing a glyph!  (Look here.)Only five of the six were added up.  The one missing is essentially a duplicate rotated 180 degress.  It would therefore have the same sum in NightCrafter's analysis (20).  So the true sum in his scheme would be 94, not 84.  94 is not a multiple of 12, 7, or 3.  

Sorry, NightCrafter!  I'm not intentionally trying to rain on your parade!  This analysis did prompt me to go a little further.  You guessed it- binary.  

Attached are three images.  "glyphs2" is another way of looking at NightCrafter's glyph maps, overlaying 1s and 0s on the pixels.  It also shows the sum of them all, which looks like an 8-bit Gravemind or something.

"glyphs-compare" is just the comparison between NightCrafter's "sum glyph" and mine.

"BinGlyph" is a typical ColdGlider affair, showing how one mapped glyph might be converted to ASCII.  You can take what you want from the results.  (Personally, I think we were Gherjsz Hammered.)

This is certainly not the end of this path, though.  For one, I would map the glyphs differently than NC in many cases.  Another thing to consider- as always- is that binary data can be interpreted in an infinite number of ways.  It may not be ASCII.

That last sentence should probably be an SGP T-Shirt.

[nightcrafter27]

I swear I deleted the 12\3=4 4+3=7 part before I posted this. Also, I did not count the second D symbol in my original study.

Post edited accordingly. I will update the spreadsheet soon.

P.S.- You accidentally said NightCrawler

[ColdGlider]

Sorry about the slip up!  I corrected my post....umm... NightCrafter. 

Thanks for sharing your idea and documentation with us here.  I do think it's a good one.

By the way, did you see this?

[nightcrafter27]

Yes, and I wish that I had any decoding skills at all. Though now I will be in a good position to work on it, so I will try.