Professor Paul1290
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Posts posted by Professor Paul1290
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For the most part I'm just thinking that a quality gameplay video that we can show whenever someone asks how The Dark Mod plays would already be a significant improvement over what there is now. Just get someone who can play well and can record a playthrough without any noticeable framerate drop to record some gameplay that demonstrates some of the nice features along the way.
There are already gameplay videos out there, but as I said they don't show up immediately when searching on youtube and a lot of them are outdated.
I think there are already a few missions that would be nice to record, The Knighton Manor and A Score to Settle come to mind.
Something along the lines of a trailer would be nice, but that would take quite a bit of extra work and I think something easier to do that would do something to fill the gap would be nice in the short term.
I get some stuttering when recording to the point where I don't think it would be that presentable, so I'd probably have to wait until after an upgrade in a few months to take a stab at it.
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I think something that The Dark Mod really needs is more easily visible gameplay videos. I still get the sense that a lot of people know that The Dark Mod exists and it has something to do with Thief, but have no idea what it's about. They sometimes think it's something like Thievery or something like that. I tend find that showing people a good gameplay video of The Dark Mod is more effective than anything else at getting them to try it.
There are some videos already out there of The Dark Mod being played, but searching "The Dark Mod" on youtube mostly brings up videos demonstrating specific mechanics or gameplay videos that outdated by now. It gives the impression of a mod that is not playable yet.
On the other hand, it might not have to necessary to record one specifically for the purpose, as there are already some pretty good ones out there even if they don't show up immediately through youtube search. Having a collection of links to some nice TDM gameplay videos somewhere on the site would be nice. If not on the front page then perhaps in the "media" section of the site as that doesn't have much more than some screenshots and concept art right now.
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As I've probably said before, I replay a lot of missions anyway. I almost always play a mission again whenever it gets an update of some kind, so I support the idea of updating old missions whenever it is convenient to do so.
On the other hand, new missions take priority of course.
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I was curious as to what sort of odd miscellaneous tricks some of you like to use when you play.
I sometimes use broadheads to knock over candles from a distance when NPCs aren't sitting right next to them to save on water arrows.
I sometimes leave doors partially open or closed so that if I come back and find them completely shut or open then I know there's a good chance an NPC still passes through that door along their patrol.
I also sometimes leave an extinguished candle or some other small object out in the middle of a hallway so that an NPC would knock it over to help check they still pass through there on a longer patrol. The reliability on this is rather hit or miss though.
A bit of a question: Do you leave doors open or closed when you search a room?
I sometimes have trouble deciding whether to leave the door open or closed while I search a room for goodies. Leaving it closed obviously makes you harder to see from the outside but leaving it open often lets you hear NPCs better as they come near.
I usually leave the door closed if there is a significant amount of light in the room and leave it open if there isn't, though I haven't had enough guards walk in on me to work out how effective this is.
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Adding gameplay after building the map: Always a bad idea! What good can come from a map that is 100 % realistic, if no AI can navigate it for example. You also always have to build around engine limitations et cetera. If you reduce your contest-idea to "non-linear level-design", you'd totally get my vote though.
Dang, somehow I knew even typing in the word "realistic" would bite me somehow, yet no matter how many times it does I never seem to learn.
Of course you have to build around engine limitations, which is why I say "at least attempt to build" and "within reason". If you've made the map so that it has severe performance problems or can't be navigated by AI then it has already gone beyond "within reason".
I don't think it would turn out well if someone tried blindly recreating a real-life setting, and if that's what it sounds like then it's definitely terrible wording on my part.
I think would be especially terrible if the mapper made a map that the AI couldn't navigate effectively because one of my pet peeves about the linear nature of some maps is that it doesn't just limit the player, but does not allow for AI and objects to flow through the map well either. The guard isn't as threatening hearing me from the next room over if he has to pass through ten other rooms and get to me the long way around (OK that's a bit extreme but you get the idea).
You're probably right that making it "non-linear map design" would probably be much clearer and more to the point.
However, I hesitated with that somewhat because it is rather subjective and different people have different ideas on what it means to be "non-linear". Some people add a few vents and open-able windows somewhere and some people think you need a hub with little objectives scattered all over the place.
It feels a bit like taking a chunk out of the maps in GTA and base a mission on that "neightborhood". That it's a real place where people live, and where the mission is played out. Springheel achieved this top notch in his A Score to Settle.
I guess that could be one way of thinking about it.
I agree that A Score to Settle, whether intentionally or not, does seem to achieve some of the ends that such a contest would shoot for. It does at times feel like a chunk of Bridgeport the mission takes place in.
I like the map in The Alchemist despite its problems because I keep seeing all sorts of cool things in my head that could happen in that map aside from the mission it has. Just the idea that stuff can happen in the place makes it interesting despite the plain buildings and such.
I also like Knighton Manor for this as well. There are some mission-specific pieces like the attic and the alarm system of course. However, I could see other possible missions with the layout of the manor going on if things turned out differently, like if the manor was passed on to another character who decided to remodel it to his/her tastes. Not sure whether that would actually make for an interesting FM, but just the sense that something like that might possibly work helps make the map feel more immersive.
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Well, it's not so much about resembling real life as it is about avoiding having the map feel too tailored for the task at hand.
I'm not exactly that knowledgeable about historic architecture, and I might not be getting the point across saying "realistic" here.
In games with a modern day setting I prefer a realistic setting just because there just so happens to be lot of modern day real-life locations that really lend themselves to this. They're not really inherently better because they are real, a lot of them just so happen to be that way by coincidence so I'm used to using real life as an example for this. All the time I see every day neighborhoods and public areas like malls, airports, offices and large houses that I think would make for nice gameplay.
Architecture from time periods resembling TDM might not offer the same convenient coincidences that a modern day setting would. I'm not much of a history expert and you probably know more about this than I do. However, in that case following real-life architecture wouldn't really achieve the desired ends at all and departing from reality may very well be a better alternative.
I mention making more than one mission for the map because I think that's a good test to see if the map isn't too specifically made for the mission, and I think that should work regardless of architectural style or time period.
I guess rather than "realistic" it would be better to say that the maps should try to make logical sense in the reality they are set in, even if that reality might not be our own. Again, it's more important that the setting feel like it was there before the mission rather than made for the mission.
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This may be a bit of a long shot in terms of feasibility but here's something I think would be interesting to eventually attempt sometime in the future.
Contest Concept: The House Was Always There
Size Restriction: None
Time Restriction: None
The idea of this contest is to promote the use of more open and realistic environments in FMs.
If you've ever played the Half-Life 2 mod series called "MINERVA", or games with realistic maps like the first three Rainbow Six games, this would apply a somewhat similar philosophy. The mapper would build, or at least attempt to build, the environments as actual environments with gameplay worked in later.
Having the map and the mission designed by separate people would be encouraged, and it would also be strongly encouraged that more than one mission is made using the same map/setting in different ways.
Maps must be somewhat more separate from the mission than usual in that maps must not be made specifically for the mission that will take place in them. The map should seem like a setting for the mission to take place in rather than a setting created specifically for the mission.
In order for this to work, the map would have to be made as if it were an actual environment, within reason of course. Houses should theoretically function well as houses, with front doors and back doors where appropriate, openable windows where possible, basements and attics, and so on.
The mission designer (which may or may not be the same person) will not be allowed to make serious structural changes to buildings or terrain to fit his/her mission that cannot be carried out without major construction or demolition work (adding furniture or installing lights is OK, digging out whole new basement complex is not).
Because of this it will be up to the mapper to make the maps as natural and open as possible to give the mission designer room for possibilities. Difficulty would be controlled through elements such as NPC patrols, locking of doors, setting of traps, and other security measures that would believably be set up in such an environment.
Hopefully this would result in a more natural and open ended environment that will not feel as "set-up" specifically for the task at hand. The maps would naturally lend themselves to multiple approaches to achieving mission objectives in a way that seems reasonable for the environment.
More importantly the map would feel like its buildings and terrain have existed before the mission and will continue to exist after just like how real-life buildings and terrain are often static or slow to change while their owners and purposes change a lot over time.
It would be as if "The House Was Always There".
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My main question is: does stuff highlight in yellow when you look at it? How does the HUD "feel" like? Did you encounter the massive clipping bugs and jerky animations other games magazines reported about?
There's an option to turn off the highlight if you like.
Most of the time it's not too bad even when on since it seems that most objects only highlight when they're near the middle of the screen.
As for the clipping bugs and jerky animations, I haven't noticed them too much. Some of the character animations are a bit odd but I haven't seen anything too bad yet.
The controls on the PC are just fine. Your mouse works as expected in the menus and such, keypads let you click or type numbers in, you can adjust X and Y sensitivity for the mouse, and that sort of thing. I think it feels more "PC" than Oblivion or Fallout 3 did.
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I think it would be nice if the flashbombs temporarily prevented the NPCs from tracking you with sound to make them more useful but I would stop short of actually adding a deafening bang to them or making them too flashbang-like.
It would seem kind of odd for something loud enough to cause temporary deafness to not make every guard in the building come in running to see what the explosion was.
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I usually re-play my favorite missions several times, usually after a week or two.
Occasionally I'll decide to re-play a mission completely at random, and by that I mean literally coin flip or roll of the dice type random. I find it interesting playing through missions again when you're not mentally prepared for them beforehand. Sometimes you get a new perspective on a mission you only played once and didn't think that much of the first time through. Of course, it's a bit tricky having the willpower to follow through with what you get sometimes, but it's pretty fun once you get into it (for me at least).
I think I find missions very replayable because I refrain from memorization somewhat. Whenever I replay missions I prefer to rely on tactics and methods that I can apply to new missions I haven't tried before rather than memorization of guard patrols and the map layouts. Basically I look at a situation again and play as if I'm missing information I already have, then come up with a way to deal with the situation without that information.
More on topic, I think building missions a certain way because you think players will only play them once is self-fulfilling to some extent.
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Okay, I enjoy Thief when I understand the level layout / patrol paths / obstacles and use them to my advantage.
I do too, to a point.
I also enjoy Thief when things go wrong for me. My favorite memories from a lot of games tend to be when something doesn't go according to plan, when something shows me my understanding of the situation is flawed, and when I have to adapt and work around it.
If I go through a whole mission and everything goes as I expect it to then I get bored. I like having a plan, but I also like having one that I can quickly revise and adapt as the situation changes and I like it when a game challenges me to do so. If everything always goes my way and I already know the layout, patrol paths, and obstacles then there's not much more for me to say about it.
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I think it would be nice if climbable vines and chains were standard across all FMs, but there's the issue of it possibly causing problems with with already existing FMs. I can't recall any specific ones off the top of my head though.
I often do try to climb vines and chains only to find that they aren't climbable.
This isn't the only thing that feels inconsistent at times, openable windows and grabbing readables are also features that feel inconsistent between FMs and within FMs as well. Different FMs can have different requirements with these and it should be the author's choice, but it still feels awkward sometimes to run into them when you're not expecting it.
I think what could help the problem would be to have a page somewhere with details regarding what players are going to expect so that authors know what is considered "standard" in these cases. It wouldn't stop anyone from doing what they want, but it could help authors be more aware of the issue and try to keep consistency within their FMs when possible.
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Sure not everyone re-plays missions, but I think more dynamic patrols can have significant enough effect on those that do at all.
I think enough players are going to memorize where things are to some degree, at least enough to know which rooms are safe and which ones aren't in later playthroughs. Even if I replay a mission I haven't played in months I may not memorize exactly where the guards go, but I still have some semi-conscious memory of which spots are "safe" and which ones aren't. I already fall into a sense of security when going through certain hallways and rooms in missions because even if I don't memorize the guard patrols exactly, I am likely to remember which rooms don't get any guards at all.
The thing is, players don't really need to conscously acknowledge whether the guards are "random" or not. All they need to know is that there is the threat that they will encounter a guard where they might not think they would, and by accomplishing and reinforcing that you've already influenced how they play.
Going back to the SWAT 4 and Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield example. When me and my friends play a mission in either of these games we often don't think about the fact that the hostiles are randomly placed as much as we think of the fact that a hostile may come from any doorway or be in any position they can reach at any time. That in itself really affects how we proceed through the mission. We're always careful about rooms we haven't gone through yet and even rooms that we have already been through but have not checked within the last minute pose a significant threat to us.
The threat that a hostile might come into the room or be in position to pose a threat to us affects how we play the game even when they don't actually do so.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is also a good example of this. Many players don't know this, but a few of the monsters in Amnesia aren't always there, and may or may not be there on a given playthrough depending on chance. This only applies to a few of the monsters and most players don't actually know that they may or may not show up, but that doesn't stop them from occasionally getting the crap scared out of them when they run into a monster they somehow didn't remember was there, in some cases they really weren't there the first time.
Guards in The Dark Mod have a just as great or greater effect on the player than terrorists or suspects or monsters in either of these games just by being where they are, so I don't think there has to be quite as much randomness in this case to achieve a similar effect.
The point is that the players don't necessarily need to know which guards are random nor know all that much about the patrols themselves, though it would be nice if they did.
You don't necessarily need the player to consciously know the guards are random. You just need to make it clear that a guard may become a threat to them when they aren't expecting it and that they should prepare for such a scenario. The threat of a guard walking in on you while you are reading or looting is enough to affect the way you play the game even when they don't actually walk in on you.
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The player does have to be willing to accept some level of unpredictability with this. Inevitably some combinations of routes are going to result in a much more difficult or much easier playthrough depending on which routes end up being used. On the other hand, if they don't result in some noticably varying difficulty then it could be argued that there isn't enough variety in the routes.
Given that I don't see players comparing exact stealth scores all that often in The Dark Mod I don't see this being that much of a problem.
I feel the biggest thing this would add is some degree of uncertainty that requires the player to prepare for what "might" happen rather than what "will" happen. I feel that not enough games have this. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of depth can come out of trying to deal with somewhat unpredictable threats. In many games this gets subdued by the fact that most missions/levels can be played through a certain way that's always best.
When you start trying to prepare for what "might" happen rather than what "will" happen I think it encourages a different way of learning the game. Instead of coming up with ways to conquer a specific missions, you take commonly occuring situations and find ways to best deal with them. You focus less on making a walkthrough in your head and focus more on developing tactics. Such methods are much more versatile and can be applied to many missions, so you're more likely to carry these lessons with you when you play a new mission. Learning from failure becomes more about improving a set of tactics that you've carried with you and have been refining over the course of several missions rather than figuring out how to beat that specific mission.
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I prefer dynamic patrols where they make sense. Obviously guards assigned to certain places aren't going to deviate very much, but not everyone would be be tied down as such, like guards on break and random civilians.
I think there is an issue in that many players won't be expecting the NPCs to deviate from their routines, but if it is eventually present in enough FMs then players will learn to prepare for it.
Personally I think it would be nice if something was there to pressure players into trying to leave themselves more room for the unexpected whenever possible. When you have to "prepare for the unexpected" it can lead to a very different style of play.
I think it's worth mentioning that many missions in tactical shooters like Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield, SWAT 4, and the ArmA series benefit from a LOT of replayability just from semi-random placement and behavior of hostiles. In these games it works very well because individual enemies have such a significant effect on the player. A single bad guy in the right place can cause a lot of damage if the player isn't careful. Because of this the player must always leave themselves room for error whenever they can and maintain "security" as best they can in case of hostiles coming from unexpected directions and this leads to much more cautious and tense gameplay.
While it's a completely different genre, The Dark Mod presents some similar conditions such that I think it could also benefit from semi-random placement or movement of NPCs. Like a tactical shooter, a stealth game like The Dark Mod has enemies that have a significant effect on how the player approaches a situation just by where they are, and again a single enemy in the right place can make things very difficult for the player if the player doesn't prepare for them. If there exists the possibility of NPCs coming from unexpected directions then that would make things very tense for the player and cause them to adopt a much more cautious style of play. Devices like mines, noise arrows, and perhaps even random junk items that make sound when stepped on would probably see much more frequent use. Player will start to pay more attention to whether they leave certain doors open or closed, how they "inspect" rooms they cannot see through sound and other means, and other such subtle details.
I suspect that if dynamic patrols became more common in The Dark Mod then it would spark a lot of deep discussions of tactics among players, especially regarding how to deal with such unknowns. Should you leave doors behind you open so you can better hear or see approaching guards or should you close them to keep concealment? When should you break away from lockpicking? How can you best locate a guard you cannot directly see? How can you best place small noise making object mines in a given common hallway configuration to ensure maximum safety for yourself before proceeding? Dealing with an unpredictable threat can cause your tactics to become much more sophisticated than they would be otherwise.
On the other hand, while having more dynamic patrols would change the gameplay in a way that I would personally find very appealing, I'm guessing not everyone would agree with me.
I'm the sort that would take failure due to a random guard walking in on me not as unfair but as a sign that I need to improve my tactics to minimize the probability of such failure. Not everyone is going to take the random guard walking in on them quite as well.
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I was on the floor above the robot wondering what the heck was making that noise and when I finally got down there I was in the strip of shadow in the middle of the hallway with the robot walking straight at me. I was backing away slowly for a while as I haven't encountered such a thing in The Dark Mod yet and I wasn't sure of how to deal with this unusual obstacle. I ended up hiding at the bottom of the elevator shaft until it turned around.
I thought the blackjack was worth a shot and I figured I could retreat back up using the elevator if it deployed razor sharp claws or something.
When I used the blackjack it simply stopped moving.
I thought "Hmm... I think I broke it" then dragged it back through the hall and left it at the bottom of the elevator shaft.
It was definitely one of the more interesting encounters I've had in The Dark Mod.
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As others have mentioned this mission could have benefited from more testing. Also, it feels a bit awkward the way the objectives change so many times and it feels like there isn't enough notification or warning about it.
Others will probably strongly disagree with me, but I thought the daylight stealth was a rather interesting change of pace. I liked having to approach it differently than I would if there were less light. However, while I think they should detect you this easily, I think the NPCs are too quick to attack you when they do see you.
I think it would help make it more comfortable if they didn't jump to completely alert as quickly when they see you. I mean, just becuase someone is standing where he shouldn't doesn't immediately mean that he intends to do harm or even if he does that doesn't necessarily mean he's a threat worth using lethal force against.
It would be nice if there was an alert level for less paranoid situations where the AI will approach and attempt to force you out of an area without using lethal force, though I'm not sure whether that's doable or would fit with The Dark Mod since most missions don't need it.
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I really liked how many ways there were to enter navigate the cathedral. The building felt navigable enough to seem like it used to be a usable building. That's something that I like a lot because it makes the setting a much more believable and it gives the players more possible routes to take.
It really bothers me in some other FMs when buildings seem too linear to feel usable.
There is a slight issue of the difficulty feeling a bit too low, but I think simply adding more haunts and zombies would hurt the atmosphere somewhat since only so many people could have lived and worked in the place. I think giving them patrols that cover more of the building would be a better way to improve the difficulty.
I noticed one of the AI on the upper floor gets stuck on the fallen statue a lot, and I'm guessing that's why the upper floor felt like it should have had an AI patrolling it but didn't.
I think the skull is too easy to miss because you have to open the coffin to get to it. None of the other coffins on the way there can be opened so the player would have likely given up on opening any of them by the time he/she reached that room. I think it would help if some of the other coffins could be opened so that the player knew he/she could open them or perhaps that specific coffin can be already open when the player gets there.
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I forget which FM it was, but I remember blackjacking guard near a ledge when I didn't want to kill anyone. Luckily as the guard started falling forward towards his death I managed to catch him just in time.
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I think it should be said that on a more positive note, indie developers as well as those in more specialized niches seem to have benefited from distributing games via download.
A lot of my recent favorite games are ones that I can't imagine doing nearly as well if it weren't for digital distribution of some kind.
I have a hard time picturing games like Evochron Mercenary, AI War: Fleet Command, The Void, or Amnesia: The Dark Descent working out at all without digital distribution. Sure Amnesia actually has physical copies floating around now, but I doubt they make up a significant portion of sales.
Of course there is a worry about being able to play old games, but it's important to remember that games aren't like books or movies. Games are like machines, and they need to be taken care of and maintained by someone or they just die slowly, and that will continue to be true unless someone comes up with some kind of magical universally accepted way of running games that will be guarenteed to continue to be supported forever. If someone somewhere wants to sell it via digital distribution or otherwise then someone has an incentive to take care of it, and having that incentive can make a big difference.
Just look at a lot of the games at Good Old Games (GOG.com). They're definitely not perfect as a lot of games still have issues, but a lot of those games would be otherwise difficult to acquire let alone run. I can't think of a practical way I would have be able to get a working copy of Outcast if it wasn't re-released on GoG.
I think the only game I got recently on physical DVDs was X-Plane, and that was only because a full game with all the scenery is really crazy large and would be a massive pain to download (just over 70GB).
The stuff that companies like EA and Ubisoft pull is really crap to be sure, but they're going to be assholes regardless of the distribution method. I don't think it would be fair to dismiss digital distribution in general just because what those companies do with it.
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There were a couple mantling issues in place I think were already mentioned, but other than that I really liked this FM. It's short but really fun while it lasts.
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I agree that it would be extremely annoying if it was something that didn't have any context.
It makes more sense as an optional goal with consequences. It would make sense if most of the gold and jewels in the house suddenly disappeared would be reason to raise alarm and "THIEF! SEARCH THE PREMESIS!". (perhaps there could be "unusually well trained guards" mentioned in the briefing.) It wouldn't be an instant-fail, but it certainly would change your situation somewhat.
Likewise I think it would make sense if you were taking your sweet time looting the place then all of a sudden the master of the house returns with guests to entertain. Again, it wouldn't be instant-fail, but now the population of the house just went up and it becomes a bit more difficult to get around unseen.
The mapper can easily flag central easy to spot loot as important. When the object is stolen, the AI's will get alarmed. Then the mapper can set an arbitrary AI to summon more guards in the location if that particular AI gets alarmed. And he certainly will be since the AI's spread the word of trouble.
Now this is rather interesting. I think I saw this mentioned somewhere but I totally forgot about it.
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Loot objects fit perfectly into the current rules. Anything the player is assumed to carry on their person (weapons, inventory objects, loot) goes immediately into inventory when frobbed. Anything else is a "junk" object, and does not go into inventory. Changing loot would actually make the system less intuitive, as you would now have to frob and 'use' every junk object to tell whether it is loot or not.
Put that way it does make more sense. I guess I'm thinking of this oddly.
I'm thinking more along the lines of the loot as a ordinary object or "junk object" that happens to be valuable rather than something you carry that happens to look like "junk". It's probably because I use and move around a lot of physics objects when I play.
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I see that you are not the exploration type player as you want to focus on the "get in, steal, and get out" theme. That is fine. I'm also that kind of player. But I wouldn't want to rob the explorers the enjoyment playing my missions by setting a time limit. It is nice to make a mission enjoyable to most player types.
But if the time limit fit seamlessly to the plot of the mission, and would not feel forced and unnatural, then why not. And if the exceeding time limit would only make things harder, but not insta-fail the mission, I see no issues in using such a gameplay element. Actually I find it interesting. Maybe the player character is poisoned? Maybe the duchess will realise the courier was intercepted and key was stolen if the courier does not return by midnight...
That is a very interesting point and pretty much what I'm getting at. Also, I think you just pointed out something I probably should really think about since it seems that a straight-up loot limit would not be the best way to approach this.
For most FMs I usually don't plan my route through from the beginning and I tend to make it a point to go everywhere, but do have a set of procedures to handle commonly occuring situations and room configurations that I apply as they come up which I suppose can be called a plan in a sense. That being said, you are right in that I like planning or at least preparing my moves ahead of time to some extent.
However, my underlying intention is not so much to discourage exploration as much as provide a sense of urgency and weight to the player's actions.
I like the idea of the sort of "soft" time limit that brings in more guards since it provides a bit of urgency but it's not a hard pass/fail condition. If the player thinks allowing reinforcements to arrive is worth being able take more time to complete a given task then that option stays open to them. The point of this is that I want the player to weigh their options and essentially figure out which outcome would be more beneficial to them.
Now that I think about it, perhaps a loot limit should work the same way. Instead of being an essential objective maybe it should trigger something to happen in-game. I'm thinking perhaps after you steal a certain amount of loot all the guards would go into a higher alert status when it becomes obvious things are going missing.
Suddenly, he throws a rock.
in The Dark Mod
Posted
This isn't really broken, but the AI's rock throwing behavior is occasionally quite hilarious.
I remember in one mission a guard wandered into a room to look for the source of a sound I made and I was standing on top of a bed. He looked in my direction with a blank expression and I thought he couldn't see me. Suddenly, he throws a rock.
Another time was playing while someone else was watching, and another guard was chased me into an elevator. I got to the elevator and pressed the button to make it ascend. As soon as the elevator started going up the guard stops and watches the elevator rise out of his reach. "Oh good, he can't catch me now!" I said. Suddenly, as the gap between the ceiling and the elevator floor was closing, the guard throws a rock right through the gap with the utmost precision hits me at the last second. "Oh goddammit I forgot they could do that!". My friend almost keeled over laughing.