Actually i've seen lots of "generic" macaroni and cheese products called Kraft Dinner (or, far more accurately, "KD"). It might depend on location, but I know that out west here, pretty much any quickly prepared macaroni with a little baggie of artificial cheese to mix in with it is called "KD" (pronounced 'Kay-dee'). "Macaroni and Cheese" usually means taking a box of real macaroni pasta (not the dehydrated stuff) and then grating actual cheese ontop of it.
Interestingly enough, the reason its not called "Kraft Macaroni and Cheese" up here like it is elsewhere is because the cheese substance (whatever the hell that stuff really is) doesn't actually meet the definition of pasturized cheese in Canada. And since products cannot be labled with foodstuffs they do not contain, Kraft cannot put the term "cheese" in the title. Hence its known as Kraft Dinner. Or, if they wanted to inject a little truth in advertizing, it would be "Kraft Teenager Emergency Rations".
Oh and its not all bad. I enjoy the stuff from time to time. I just absolutely cannot eat the stuff re-heated. I swear that cheese substance breaks down as it cools and turns into a rubber compound. Which is probably why it'd be a good thermal insulator as mentioned...
Not just for religion
on
Bloodless Surgery
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Okay, yes, good on Jehovah's Witnesses for reinforcing the desire for these types of procedures, but stop and think that this might not just be a religious issue. Theres a whole 7% of the population out there who, like me, are type O negative. And while we may be wonderful/magical/mythical creatures capable of donating our blood to anyone other human being on the planet (especially handy during time-critical emergencies), we are unfortunately incapable of accepting red blood transfusions from anyone BUT an O- donor.
So this is also good news to some of us who may be concerned with limited supplies of compatible blood in an a system already struggling to meet demand. Hooray.
Oh dear. I remember that show. I remember how amazingly fucking creepy that little robot girl was. That damned show gave me nightmares. I totally forgot about them until I googled Small Wonder. I must have been supressing the experience, because now i've got a faint memory of being 8 years old and unable to sleep because I was afraid a 10 year old girl with a circuit board in the back of her skull was going to murder me in the middle of the goddamn night.
Thanks for reviving my childhood horrors, jackass.
(Just kidding... about the jackass part. The nightmares were real. Anyone else have them? Just me? Okay then.)
Ok, im a big TA fan too, but you do know that the original C&C was released before TA, right? If memory serves, C&C was '95, Red Alert was '96, and then Total Annihilation was released in '97. Oh and then Starcraft appeared in 98, but who cares about them, right?:P
Also, for the record... the sequel to the most amazing RTS ever, aka Total Annihilation 2, aka Supreme Commander is scheduled to rock the RTS world some time in 2007. Oh hell yes. *Fanboi drooling noises*
Will never happen. Too much legal paranoia. In the realm of videogames, almost nothing crosses that sacred developer/publisher - customer line. They (dev/pub) are far too worried about being sued should they dare put someone elses "work" or "intellectual property" (indeed, most developers are completely deaf to specific suggestions, lest someone claim their "idea" was "stolen") into their game.
Its a sad reflection on business and the legal system, really. Fans are willing to bend over backwards to improve their favorite game (see: any healthy mod scene), and developers would love to harness the extra manpower (see: modding competitions). But publishers and developers legal departments would howl and fling poo in all directions should the two ever honestly collaborate (see: EULAs).
Why? Not because some idiot might sue over having their work "stolen" after giving it away... but because some judge might think that idiot is right.
I've never had a problem with my speakers, but I have noticed the monitor thing. One day a heck of a long time ago I had my cell on and sitting right next to (almost under) my CRT monitor. I was plugging along for a little while, when suddenly the image on my CRT started to warp slightly. My first thought was "what the...?" my second thought was "but this monitor is only like 8 months old!" and then... my cell phone rang. Queue lightbulb above the head. It was kind of a neat warning actually, since it happened a good two or three seconds before my phone actually rang. Without knowing the possible ramifications of such interference though, I decided to now keep my cell on a nightstand or somewhere else away from other big electronic gizmos.
Huh? If you can do it, the car can do it too. If the car couldn't do it, then how the hell would you? Unless your idea of parallel parking is to get out and *lift* your car into its parking spot, Ahnold.;)
Well for starters, im gonna guess you need to be stopped to engage the assist mode. Also, I don't think your average young mischevious punk could figure out how to 'hack' the thing. Car computers tend to be magical black boxes whos inner workings are carefuly guarded secrets. And lastly, all else failing you can always just hit the brakes. Thats what they're there for.
New vehicle technology always sounds scary, but eventually you'll wonder how you ever survived without it. ABS, anyone?
You forgot 'navigating the ring of idiots'. Er, I mean, traffic circle.
We'll probably see that technology when they successfully adapt the asteroid dodging technology they used on the space shuttles in Armageddon. *Beep beep beep*
*WHUMP* "...what was that?"
"Pedestrian."
"Oh."
Its not exaactly what you ordered, as the rear wheels don't steer, AFAIK. But it does have such a negligible turning radius that you could literally drive forward into a parking spot, and then turn the car... well, any way you wanted.
Too bad the thing looks like a baby carriage. Probably has the crash rating of one too.
If you design the game so that the player's computer knows something before the player should then you are practically begging cheaters to ruin the game.
Unfortunatly its not always that black and white. Due to the nature of networked gameplay, its often very helpful that the client is given data in advance of an event appearing on-screen. Otherwise everything you "see" has the front end clipped off (eg: players appearing out of nowhere) because of latency. Most modern real-time networked games are one big charade of interpolation anyways, so when you starve the client of data weird things will happen.
Its a horrible ballance between making a good looking, good playing game, and trying to protect your creation from the asshats of society.
The engine will probably always support "sprites". Technically the HUD of most games is a collection of sprites. Particle effects (eg: smoke) are essentially animated sprites. Sprites are handy little things, especially considering how cheap they are to render.
So the real question is weather or not people will continue to use them where they shouldn't.
I think Rogers bought out much of Shaw's eastern holdings (Ontario/Quebec etc) a decade or two ago. Shaw is still quite prominent in Alberta, at least.
Whoever penned this article CLEARLY does not play World of Warcraft.
Actually they're all true at some point in the game...
Keep Moving - Applies to LOTS of bosses. Magmadar spits out his little flaming snots you run around, Shazzra teleports and chases people all over, Razorgore has about eleventy billion adds that most guilds kite around the room, Flamegor, Firemaw, and Chromaggus are all peek-a-boo bosses, etc etc. Quite a lot of bosses in the game require some sort of movement during the fight. Some of the newer ones especially - Hakkar and dragging his little Sons' into the fight, Buru the Gorger and running from egg to egg, and from what I hear Ossiran requires the whole raid to basically drag him around from spot to spot, or he goes into uber-mode and instantly kills anyone he touches.
If the boss stops, panic - Sort of applies to Onyxia. If she ever pauses her fireballs in phase 2 and you get that lovely "Onyxia takes a deep breath..." emote/warning... then, ya, panic. The mother of all sneezes is about to deep fry anyone standing in the wrong spot. A more literal version of this concept would probably be Baron Geddon. He's technically free to run around most of the time, but every 30 seconds or something he'll stop in place and start his little inferno farts. At first they aren't too bad, but if you're standing anywhere close to him near the end, you're one crispy critter. It would also kind of apply to Taerar. At certain points he'll self-banish and out pop three smaller dragons that will start running around and eating healers. Oh, and Ragnaros too. When he submerges every 3 minutes, a buttload of little fire elementals appear and start randomly killing people.
Scan for weak spots - Kind of a tough one, but Chromaggus immediately comes to mind. He's very resistant to all kinds of magic except one, and that one magic type will cause 3x its normal damage. This randomly changes every, like, 20 seconds or something. So anyone dealing magical damage gets to "chase his weak spot".
The Quarter Rule - This ones pretty obvious, all four of the outdoor emerald dragons have special events that trigger on the quarters (75/50/25). Ysondre spawns tons of little moonfire spamming druids, Emeriss gives the whole raid a nasty disease, Taerar banishes and spawns his three minions, and Lethon freezes everyone to suck their souls outta them. Some other bosses have phased fights too, like Onyxia who takes flight at a certain point, and then lands again after shes taken more damage. And who can forget the insane lag when Nefarion reanimates his Drakonids at 20%?
Take a break - Not a tactic, but yeah, it works. You can have 40 people wipe wipe wipe on a boss one night, then bring the same 40 people back the next night and watch them 1-shot the encounter. Thats always good for a laugh... and a groan.
So overall i'd say its a fairly universal article, at least from my experience:)
PS: The Rogue + Doodad comment can only be one fight: Broodlord Lashslayer. Technically he's not a Dragon, he's a Drakonid (basically a dragon-man). And the supression devices (doodads) are there to give rogues something else to do besides stab stuff.
Yes, I am a WoW geek.:P
Thinking "backwards" always fucks me up. I get my directions flipped and just end up confusing myself even more. I've either got to start from a landmark of some sort, or right from the beginning and retrace my steps that way.
Though I guess its worth nothing that i'm also one of those people who sucks at reading the alphabet backwards. And if i'm ever quizzed on "what letter comes before..." I generally have to pick a 'landmark' string of letters ('lmnop' seems to be easiest, dont ask me why) and quickly run forwards from that point to figure it out. A lot of my navigation, be it physical or statistical, tends to be like that. Doing the whole random access thing just tends to be difficult for me, i'm much better with patterns and comparisons. It's not too suprising to me though, i've always been a better artist than a mathimatician - and I sure love my video games.
I think some peoples brains just function differently. I don't know why really... maybe its genetics, maybe its stimuli, maybe its all just completely random. And if there ever comes a day when we DO know for sure, im going to be very very excited, and very VERY scared.
Yup! Shaw did this to me and my family. We got a letter claiming we were "excessively using" our internet connection - a so called "unlimited" service. When we asked them what the limit was on their 'unlimited' service, they refused to give us an answer. So we refused to limit our usage. Weeks later we got a second and much nastier letter from Shaw, threatening us with additional charges/disconnection/yaddayadda. Once again we asked what the limit to their unlimited service was, and they said they couldn't tell us. So after some arguing with Shaw that got us nowhere, we told them where they could stick their "unlimited" services and their threats. We canceled our internet AND cable subscriptions (which they cheerfully insisted was unnesessary), told them they would never again have our business, and switched to Sat/DSL. And we're all much happier for it.:)
A-10's are still coming home like that. Out of curiosity I hit google after reading your post, and stumbled across some pictures of an A-10 that had its tail swiss-cheesed in Iraq. Yet despite having bullet holes in the rear wing, body, and engine nozzle, a giant freaking hole in one wing, AND the pilot losing all hydraulic controls... it still flew home and landed. By a rather petite looking woman yanking on the manual controls, to boot! The survivability of an A-10 is simply amazing. Compared to the delicate nature of most aircraft, A-10's have certainly earned their reputation as flying tanks. A most impressive machine, IMO.
To me the question of HUD design really depends on the game.
Some titles really lend themselves to a simplified HUD. Something beautiful, elegant, and unobtrusive. For instance, Red Orchestra (as mentioned by another thread on this news posting) has all of three persistant elements: A paper doll, a clip count, and a pocket watch. Gorgeous HUD, awesome game.
On the other hand, some games DO lend themselves to detailed HUDs. Unfortunatly the only poignant example I can think of is a personal one, and that would be the custom interfaces in World of Warcraft. I've pieced together my own setup that not a lot of people seem to like (though i'm not suprised). During full raid-mode it's disgusting... to some, in the sense of filth... but to me, the only disgusting thing is just how much information I have. I'm an officer in my guild, so one of my duties is keeping things organized during raids. This means status indicators on all 40 players, multiple chat boxes, indicators of what the monsters are doing, etc, etc etc. A good 3/4ths of my screen is partially obscured by something.... and y'know what? I love it! I equate it to landing an aircraft by instrument (which, I guess, would be another example: flight sims). It may not look 'pretty' but in terms of control, precision, and raw data, its unrivaled by anything one could ever dream of with a spartan HUD.
So while I do enjoy the slimmed down or integrated HUDs we're seeing in more and more games, I still think a good solid HUD isn't something a developer (or player!) should shy away from in all situations. Sometimes half the fun of a game is being swept away in an avalanche of input, and then deciding how to act on it!
Last I heard and played, RO minimizes these kinds of 'features'. Reason being, despite how cool they sound, they really aren't that fun. Hobbling around the map at 1/5th speed because a bullet nicked you in the ankle really, REALLY sucked. Players were frequently using the/suicide command when injured with a permanent limp or the like. That said to the developers that, if your avatar is wounded to that degree, you're effectively a casualty and should be removed from play. The last time I played RO you could still have temporary limps from leg wounds, and being shot in the arm would cause you to drop your weapon and, I think, affect your weapon sway, but that was about it. In all other cases you were considered to be "incapacitated" and respawned as a fresh reinforcement.
Considering they've been around since '93, it'd be a little dissapointing if it 250k per. That'd mean they'd pirated um... about two things a year. Im thinkin they're talkin retail prices, or something close to.
Slashdot Mirror
Why hello Dirk Benedict, I didn't know you had a Slashdot account.
Actually i've seen lots of "generic" macaroni and cheese products called Kraft Dinner (or, far more accurately, "KD"). It might depend on location, but I know that out west here, pretty much any quickly prepared macaroni with a little baggie of artificial cheese to mix in with it is called "KD" (pronounced 'Kay-dee'). "Macaroni and Cheese" usually means taking a box of real macaroni pasta (not the dehydrated stuff) and then grating actual cheese ontop of it.
Interestingly enough, the reason its not called "Kraft Macaroni and Cheese" up here like it is elsewhere is because the cheese substance (whatever the hell that stuff really is) doesn't actually meet the definition of pasturized cheese in Canada. And since products cannot be labled with foodstuffs they do not contain, Kraft cannot put the term "cheese" in the title. Hence its known as Kraft Dinner. Or, if they wanted to inject a little truth in advertizing, it would be "Kraft Teenager Emergency Rations".
Oh and its not all bad. I enjoy the stuff from time to time. I just absolutely cannot eat the stuff re-heated. I swear that cheese substance breaks down as it cools and turns into a rubber compound. Which is probably why it'd be a good thermal insulator as mentioned...
Okay, yes, good on Jehovah's Witnesses for reinforcing the desire for these types of procedures, but stop and think that this might not just be a religious issue. Theres a whole 7% of the population out there who, like me, are type O negative. And while we may be wonderful/magical/mythical creatures capable of donating our blood to anyone other human being on the planet (especially handy during time-critical emergencies), we are unfortunately incapable of accepting red blood transfusions from anyone BUT an O- donor.
So this is also good news to some of us who may be concerned with limited supplies of compatible blood in an a system already struggling to meet demand. Hooray.
I got 7 out of 8... I would have had 8/8 but I second guessed myself on one of the P2P programs at the last second. D'oh.
Both LG and JVC are supposedly considering building dual HDDVD/Bluray players too.
Oh dear. I remember that show. I remember how amazingly fucking creepy that little robot girl was. That damned show gave me nightmares. I totally forgot about them until I googled Small Wonder. I must have been supressing the experience, because now i've got a faint memory of being 8 years old and unable to sleep because I was afraid a 10 year old girl with a circuit board in the back of her skull was going to murder me in the middle of the goddamn night.
Thanks for reviving my childhood horrors, jackass.
(Just kidding... about the jackass part. The nightmares were real. Anyone else have them? Just me? Okay then.)
Ok, im a big TA fan too, but you do know that the original C&C was released before TA, right? If memory serves, C&C was '95, Red Alert was '96, and then Total Annihilation was released in '97. Oh and then Starcraft appeared in 98, but who cares about them, right? :P
Also, for the record... the sequel to the most amazing RTS ever, aka Total Annihilation 2, aka Supreme Commander is scheduled to rock the RTS world some time in 2007. Oh hell yes. *Fanboi drooling noises*
Will never happen. Too much legal paranoia. In the realm of videogames, almost nothing crosses that sacred developer/publisher - customer line. They (dev/pub) are far too worried about being sued should they dare put someone elses "work" or "intellectual property" (indeed, most developers are completely deaf to specific suggestions, lest someone claim their "idea" was "stolen") into their game.
Its a sad reflection on business and the legal system, really. Fans are willing to bend over backwards to improve their favorite game (see: any healthy mod scene), and developers would love to harness the extra manpower (see: modding competitions). But publishers and developers legal departments would howl and fling poo in all directions should the two ever honestly collaborate (see: EULAs).
Why? Not because some idiot might sue over having their work "stolen" after giving it away... but because some judge might think that idiot is right.
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
-- Antoine De Saint-Exupery
I've never had a problem with my speakers, but I have noticed the monitor thing. One day a heck of a long time ago I had my cell on and sitting right next to (almost under) my CRT monitor. I was plugging along for a little while, when suddenly the image on my CRT started to warp slightly. My first thought was "what the...?" my second thought was "but this monitor is only like 8 months old!" and then... my cell phone rang. Queue lightbulb above the head. It was kind of a neat warning actually, since it happened a good two or three seconds before my phone actually rang. Without knowing the possible ramifications of such interference though, I decided to now keep my cell on a nightstand or somewhere else away from other big electronic gizmos.
Huh? If you can do it, the car can do it too. If the car couldn't do it, then how the hell would you? Unless your idea of parallel parking is to get out and *lift* your car into its parking spot, Ahnold. ;)
Well for starters, im gonna guess you need to be stopped to engage the assist mode. Also, I don't think your average young mischevious punk could figure out how to 'hack' the thing. Car computers tend to be magical black boxes whos inner workings are carefuly guarded secrets. And lastly, all else failing you can always just hit the brakes. Thats what they're there for.
New vehicle technology always sounds scary, but eventually you'll wonder how you ever survived without it. ABS, anyone?
You forgot 'navigating the ring of idiots'. Er, I mean, traffic circle.
We'll probably see that technology when they successfully adapt the asteroid dodging technology they used on the space shuttles in Armageddon.
*Beep beep beep*
*WHUMP*
"...what was that?"
"Pedestrian."
"Oh."
It could be coming.
Its not exaactly what you ordered, as the rear wheels don't steer, AFAIK. But it does have such a negligible turning radius that you could literally drive forward into a parking spot, and then turn the car... well, any way you wanted.
Too bad the thing looks like a baby carriage. Probably has the crash rating of one too.
Its a horrible ballance between making a good looking, good playing game, and trying to protect your creation from the asshats of society.
The engine will probably always support "sprites". Technically the HUD of most games is a collection of sprites. Particle effects (eg: smoke) are essentially animated sprites. Sprites are handy little things, especially considering how cheap they are to render.
So the real question is weather or not people will continue to use them where they shouldn't.
*Hands to temples* I predict... yes.
I think Rogers bought out much of Shaw's eastern holdings (Ontario/Quebec etc) a decade or two ago. Shaw is still quite prominent in Alberta, at least.
Actually they're all true at some point in the game...
Keep Moving - Applies to LOTS of bosses. Magmadar spits out his little flaming snots you run around, Shazzra teleports and chases people all over, Razorgore has about eleventy billion adds that most guilds kite around the room, Flamegor, Firemaw, and Chromaggus are all peek-a-boo bosses, etc etc. Quite a lot of bosses in the game require some sort of movement during the fight. Some of the newer ones especially - Hakkar and dragging his little Sons' into the fight, Buru the Gorger and running from egg to egg, and from what I hear Ossiran requires the whole raid to basically drag him around from spot to spot, or he goes into uber-mode and instantly kills anyone he touches.
If the boss stops, panic - Sort of applies to Onyxia. If she ever pauses her fireballs in phase 2 and you get that lovely "Onyxia takes a deep breath..." emote/warning... then, ya, panic. The mother of all sneezes is about to deep fry anyone standing in the wrong spot. A more literal version of this concept would probably be Baron Geddon. He's technically free to run around most of the time, but every 30 seconds or something he'll stop in place and start his little inferno farts. At first they aren't too bad, but if you're standing anywhere close to him near the end, you're one crispy critter. It would also kind of apply to Taerar. At certain points he'll self-banish and out pop three smaller dragons that will start running around and eating healers. Oh, and Ragnaros too. When he submerges every 3 minutes, a buttload of little fire elementals appear and start randomly killing people.
Scan for weak spots - Kind of a tough one, but Chromaggus immediately comes to mind. He's very resistant to all kinds of magic except one, and that one magic type will cause 3x its normal damage. This randomly changes every, like, 20 seconds or something. So anyone dealing magical damage gets to "chase his weak spot".
The Quarter Rule - This ones pretty obvious, all four of the outdoor emerald dragons have special events that trigger on the quarters (75/50/25). Ysondre spawns tons of little moonfire spamming druids, Emeriss gives the whole raid a nasty disease, Taerar banishes and spawns his three minions, and Lethon freezes everyone to suck their souls outta them. Some other bosses have phased fights too, like Onyxia who takes flight at a certain point, and then lands again after shes taken more damage. And who can forget the insane lag when Nefarion reanimates his Drakonids at 20%?
Take a break - Not a tactic, but yeah, it works. You can have 40 people wipe wipe wipe on a boss one night, then bring the same 40 people back the next night and watch them 1-shot the encounter. Thats always good for a laugh... and a groan.
So overall i'd say its a fairly universal article, at least from my experience
PS: The Rogue + Doodad comment can only be one fight: Broodlord Lashslayer. Technically he's not a Dragon, he's a Drakonid (basically a dragon-man). And the supression devices (doodads) are there to give rogues something else to do besides stab stuff.
Yes, I am a WoW geek.
Thinking "backwards" always fucks me up. I get my directions flipped and just end up confusing myself even more. I've either got to start from a landmark of some sort, or right from the beginning and retrace my steps that way.
Though I guess its worth nothing that i'm also one of those people who sucks at reading the alphabet backwards. And if i'm ever quizzed on "what letter comes before..." I generally have to pick a 'landmark' string of letters ('lmnop' seems to be easiest, dont ask me why) and quickly run forwards from that point to figure it out. A lot of my navigation, be it physical or statistical, tends to be like that. Doing the whole random access thing just tends to be difficult for me, i'm much better with patterns and comparisons. It's not too suprising to me though, i've always been a better artist than a mathimatician - and I sure love my video games.
I think some peoples brains just function differently. I don't know why really... maybe its genetics, maybe its stimuli, maybe its all just completely random. And if there ever comes a day when we DO know for sure, im going to be very very excited, and very VERY scared.
Yup! Shaw did this to me and my family. We got a letter claiming we were "excessively using" our internet connection - a so called "unlimited" service. When we asked them what the limit was on their 'unlimited' service, they refused to give us an answer. So we refused to limit our usage. Weeks later we got a second and much nastier letter from Shaw, threatening us with additional charges/disconnection/yaddayadda. Once again we asked what the limit to their unlimited service was, and they said they couldn't tell us. So after some arguing with Shaw that got us nowhere, we told them where they could stick their "unlimited" services and their threats. We canceled our internet AND cable subscriptions (which they cheerfully insisted was unnesessary), told them they would never again have our business, and switched to Sat/DSL. And we're all much happier for it. :)
A-10's are still coming home like that. Out of curiosity I hit google after reading your post, and stumbled across some pictures of an A-10 that had its tail swiss-cheesed in Iraq. Yet despite having bullet holes in the rear wing, body, and engine nozzle, a giant freaking hole in one wing, AND the pilot losing all hydraulic controls... it still flew home and landed. By a rather petite looking woman yanking on the manual controls, to boot! The survivability of an A-10 is simply amazing. Compared to the delicate nature of most aircraft, A-10's have certainly earned their reputation as flying tanks. A most impressive machine, IMO.
To me the question of HUD design really depends on the game.
Some titles really lend themselves to a simplified HUD. Something beautiful, elegant, and unobtrusive. For instance, Red Orchestra (as mentioned by another thread on this news posting) has all of three persistant elements: A paper doll, a clip count, and a pocket watch. Gorgeous HUD, awesome game.
On the other hand, some games DO lend themselves to detailed HUDs. Unfortunatly the only poignant example I can think of is a personal one, and that would be the custom interfaces in World of Warcraft. I've pieced together my own setup that not a lot of people seem to like (though i'm not suprised). During full raid-mode it's disgusting... to some, in the sense of filth... but to me, the only disgusting thing is just how much information I have. I'm an officer in my guild, so one of my duties is keeping things organized during raids. This means status indicators on all 40 players, multiple chat boxes, indicators of what the monsters are doing, etc, etc etc. A good 3/4ths of my screen is partially obscured by something.... and y'know what? I love it! I equate it to landing an aircraft by instrument (which, I guess, would be another example: flight sims). It may not look 'pretty' but in terms of control, precision, and raw data, its unrivaled by anything one could ever dream of with a spartan HUD.
So while I do enjoy the slimmed down or integrated HUDs we're seeing in more and more games, I still think a good solid HUD isn't something a developer (or player!) should shy away from in all situations. Sometimes half the fun of a game is being swept away in an avalanche of input, and then deciding how to act on it!
Last I heard and played, RO minimizes these kinds of 'features'. Reason being, despite how cool they sound, they really aren't that fun. Hobbling around the map at 1/5th speed because a bullet nicked you in the ankle really, REALLY sucked. Players were frequently using the /suicide command when injured with a permanent limp or the like. That said to the developers that, if your avatar is wounded to that degree, you're effectively a casualty and should be removed from play. The last time I played RO you could still have temporary limps from leg wounds, and being shot in the arm would cause you to drop your weapon and, I think, affect your weapon sway, but that was about it. In all other cases you were considered to be "incapacitated" and respawned as a fresh reinforcement.
Considering they've been around since '93, it'd be a little dissapointing if it 250k per. That'd mean they'd pirated um... about two things a year. Im thinkin they're talkin retail prices, or something close to.