Adult filter? Parental stuff?

[Jason Carr]

30 minutes ago, rexryan said:

Why is this even an discussion? Everyone i bet there kids have access to tablets/ their own cell phone/PC  etc..And i see a post that Sharp X68000 is a cesspool of porn games..Your the one that downloaded them..If i cant trust my kids when im not around for video games  then I have a bigger problem than games .

There are many more reasons for parental filters with games than hiding porn games. I don't keep porn games in my collection at all, but I would prefer if rated M games with videos weren't displayed for them. You're a bit off in thinking that it's just a matter of trusting your kids; it doesn't really matter if that's an issue or not if a kid can stumble on content they shouldn't see. My kids don't want violent content because they don't like it, and so they don't want to see it.

I don't really understand why you're so passionate about this, but I just wanted to clarify this because there seems to be a lot of confusion. Filters are not a replacement for parenting, and they should never be, but they're also very useful. You wouldn't put a bunch of porn ads in front of your kids and expect them not to look. That just doesn't make sense.

[L33haw]

Another two years in, any progress on this? Depressing how forums immediately turn into arguing why a feature/question are valid or not, but here we are.

surely it can’t be that hard to add a simple password lock for games that parents deem necessary?

[L33haw]

Yeah that would be quite slick on the boot up of BigBox. That feature could then double up as a way of tailoring the user experience by being able to set specific games per user on preference grounds not just age rating.

[Lordmonkus]

12 hours ago, L33haw said:

Depressing how forums immediately turn into arguing why a feature/question are valid or not, but here we are.

There is no argument about it.

I'll just repeat what I have already said in this thread, it gets on the polls but never gets many votes so it doesn't make it beyond the poll stage. People want other things more so that gets the time dedicated to implementing it. The people that actually want it are vocal but unfortunately in the very small minority.

[Lordmonkus]

There hasn't been a poll since the last poll because the stuff from the previous poll is still being finished up.

1 hour ago, Pixelpiper said:

Besides that, most people don't know what they want/need until they've already seen it done.  I'd be fine if Jason never had another poll again and just set his own roadmap as he saw fit.

Right, cause people don't know what they want unless you tell them and Jason does what you want.

[Hazuki]

I just wanted to say that I also want this feature. I like playing games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill, but I would prefer to be able to filter out those games until I enter my pin or confirm that it's me using BigBox.

This may never happen, and there may be other stuff that's more important to the majority of people, but if it's added I would be grateful.

[Mr.Laor]

Bump. My kids are getting older. I need this.  Please reconsider. 

[Lordmonkus]

1 hour ago, Pixelpiper said:

I'm just a paying customer

So are the people who vote on the polls.

1 hour ago, Pixelpiper said:

coming here to be continually insulted by overzealous know-it-all mods.

Insulted you how ? Show me where we insulted you. You're the one here acting all entitled because you are a paying customer, so are many other people who don't share your opinion of what features should and shouldn't be in the software.

You asked your question, you got honest straight forward answers, we can't help it you don't agree with the answer. We aren't jerks just because you don't agree with the answer given to your question. This is a you issue, not us.

If you go back and read this thread and others asking for the same thing you will find we agree that would be a good feature but the polls dictate the majority of the users don't care about it. It really does very poorly on the polls when it is on there, like bottom 5 out of 40 possible features.

[Lordmonkus]

2 hours ago, Mr.Laor said:

Bump. My kids are getting older. I need this.  Please reconsider. 

Again, it's up to the polls which is voted on by the community. This feature does very poorly every time it's on there. Maybe the next poll it will be on there again and maybe it will get enough votes to make the cut.

[Mr.Laor]

When is the next poll?  I feel like I haven't seen one in a very long time. 

[Lordmonkus]

When the stuff from the last one is completed. When Jason does a poll he puts 40 items on it taken from a list of things submitted on the bitbucket page. The top 20 voted for items make the cut and get worked on and when those 20 items are completed he does a new poll.

The stuff from the last poll is getting close to completion now, in fact the last thing is being worked on now, BigBox Wall View Overhaul.

You can see the last poll here: 

And as can be seen in the poll results last time Parental Controls was #35 out of 40.

[Jason Carr]

On 3/28/2021 at 2:09 AM, L33haw said:

Another two years in, any progress on this? Depressing how forums immediately turn into arguing why a feature/question are valid or not, but here we are.

surely it can’t be that hard to add a simple password lock for games that parents deem necessary?

 

On 3/28/2021 at 4:11 PM, Pixelpiper said:

There hasn't been a poll since sometime in 2019 AFAIK.  Kind of moot the whole poll discussion. Besides that, most people don't know what they want/need until they've already seen it done.  I'd be fine if Jason never had another poll again and just set his own roadmap as he saw fit.

 

2 hours ago, Pixelpiper said:

WTF do I know, I'm just a paying customer, coming here to be continually insulted by overzealous know-it-all mods.

Honestly, Jason has a huge uphill battle if anyone else feels as I do, that a couple (literally like two, maybe three if I'm stretching it), of the mods here have really soured me on Launchbox in general.

It's comments like these that instigate, cause drama, and put these forums in a poor state. With comments like these, you can't complain about the moderators; they're not going around spreading negativity like this. Y'all are searching for a fight.

Guess what? I want parental controls too. I'm a parent too. But threads like this make me *not* want to tackle it. I will never be convinced to do anything with words like these.

Regardless, I've always focused on doing what people want the most, even above my own desires for what I want in the app. I don't see that changing.

My current workaround is just to curate a collection for my kids. It's super easy to take your collection, copy it, and then remove whatever you don't want the kids playing.

[Hifihedgehog]

I guess the reason I’ve never bothered to voice an opinion on a feature like this is I fall in the camp of people who think that if I wouldn’t want my shire folk to see or play it, I probably shouldn’t be seeing or playing it myself. Now, if a VidAngel of sorts existed for games, I guess I would be more open to the idea except such a tool would be a coding nightmare to maintain or even to create to begin with. Then again, if such a thing even existed, we wouldn’t need even need a curated list at that point since we could just filter out objectionable content on the fly. That said, if others are interested, I can throw my vote behind it next round for the sake of those who want it.

Edited April 3, 2021 by Hifihedgehog

[kayoti]

On 4/2/2021 at 9:11 PM, Jason Carr said:

My current workaround is just to curate a collection for my kids. It's super easy to take your collection, copy it, and then remove whatever you don't want the kids playing.

Hi Jason, I don't quite understand what you mean.  Do you duplicate your entire Launchbox directory, and in the duplicate remove the non-kid-friendly games?  Then the Kids have their Launchbox exe and you have yours?

 

Thanks, I really appreciate any help you can offer.

[faeran]

11 hours ago, kayoti said:

Hi Jason, I don't quite understand what you mean.  Do you duplicate your entire Launchbox directory, and in the duplicate remove the non-kid-friendly games?  Then the Kids have their Launchbox exe and you have yours?

 

Thanks, I really appreciate any help you can offer.

Yes, this is definitely one way you can accomplish this.

[kayoti]

On 10/22/2021 at 8:23 AM, faeran said:

Yes, this is definitely one way you can accomplish this.

Sorry to ask about this again, but is there another way?  This method winds up causing double maintenance between the two launchbox locations.  I'm curious what Jason was talking about with curated collections.  Is there a way to select a specific collection to use?

Thanks!

[faeran]

54 minutes ago, kayoti said:

Sorry to ask about this again, but is there another way?  This method winds up causing double maintenance between the two launchbox locations.  I'm curious what Jason was talking about with curated collections.  Is there a way to select a specific collection to use?

Thanks!

The duplicating your LaunchBox install, and then curating the copy to only include the games that you want your kids to play is what Jason was referring to. Unfortunately, there's no simpler way at the moment.

[C-Beats]

@kayoti The only other way currently is to use the "Hide" field as your means of doing what you want. Mark games you want filter as hidden and then when some one is using the app that you don't want to be able to see the items you can hide games marked hidden, then when you are on and want access to them turn that off so Hidden games are still shown. You could essentially do the same thing with the broken field if you wanted.

[kayoti]

2 hours ago, C-Beats said:

@kayoti The only other way currently is to use the "Hide" field as your means of doing what you want. Mark games you want filter as hidden and then when some one is using the app that you don't want to be able to see the items you can hide games marked hidden, then when you are on and want access to them turn that off so Hidden games are still shown. You could essentially do the same thing with the broken field if you wanted.

Ah, clever.  Thanks for this idea, I appreciate it.

[Hifihedgehog]

Sorry for the necro but someone made a TV Guardian like filter for games recently. I use their other tool (Cinema Guard) and ran across it on their blog. I cannot speak to it since I do not play games with strong language. However, if you have a game with profanity that you want to make more presentable for your children, this tool sounds like it should do the trick. The way it works is it uses OCR on a game's subtitles to remove and mute the profanity in real-time.

C# Software: Game Guard (csharpsoftwareza.blogspot.com)