Parental Controls...

[oioioi99]

Hi all,

Please bear with me if this is posted in the wrong section of the forum (I wasn't able to find a sub-section that clearly was devoted to suggestions of future features, which is what this post is about).

First off, I really like Dolphin! I primarily use it to play co-op games with my son, who is eight. We have some child friendly PC games as well, but we pretty much only play on Dolphin these days. The Wii games are simply by far the most fun and family friendly games out there, and I am sure I am not the only parent embracing Dolphin for this reason.

So, I was wondering if the developers have ever considered implementing some sort of parental controls in Dolphin? The emulator has reached a level of maturity where it is comparable to pretty much any modern console (and they certainly all have parental controls), and to at least start considering some sort of password protected settings for parents would perhaps make sense...

I was thinking of something along the lines of:

1) a setting for a daily gaming limit (e.g. 30 minutes/day)
2) a setting for a daily/weekly start-up and shut-down times (e.g. Mon-Fri 7pm-8pm, Sun 10am-12am)
3) an ability to monitor which games are being played (and when and for how long)
4) an ability to restrict access to specific games that are less suitable for kids

Obviously, the operating system (in my case Windows 10) already offer parents some level of parental control, but specific controls in Dolphin would be preferable (numbers 3 and 4 above would require it, and numbers 1 and 2 would work better if set up and controlled within Dolphin)

Anyway, just a friendly suggestion

Cheers,
Oioioi

[mbc07]

Moved to General Discussion...

[MayImilae]

Dolphin doesn't really need to worry about this... It would be better to use your operating system to impose limits like that.

oioioi99 Wrote:4) an ability to restrict access to specific games that are less suitable for kids

That one there would be especially hard! GameCube games don't have the rating built into them, we'd have to get that from an external source. But that's also the only thing an operating system couldn't do...

[KHg8m3r]

Well, Windows 10 can address the time limitations, but as for monitoring which games are played and restricting games that are too mature for a child isn't something that Windows 10 can help in the case of Dolphin only. You can read here about what Windows 10 can and can't do: http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/parental-controls-windows-10

For restricting games of a certain maturity rating, that's not something that I'm aware of is part of the game data, so not something Dolphin could easily implement.
I think this would just come down to having two different game folders, one filled with games for your children, and one with more mature games for you. You could have two different Dolphin .exes for each or something like that.

[JosJuice]

(05-07-2017, 04:40 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: For restricting games of a certain maturity rating, that's not something that I'm aware of is part of the game data, so not something Dolphin could easily implement.

It is actually part of the game data for Wii games (but not GameCube games). It's used by the parental control function that's built into Wiis.

[Helios]

Also against this. It's not dolphin's problem to control what your kids can or can't do. We're emulating a console. Not trying to sell a product that appeals to a wide group.

You can easily implement this at the OS level by setting specific user accounts for your kids, and keeping the more mature games out of their user accessible folders and using third party tools to limit how long Dolphin gets to run daily.

[Shonumi]

3rd party tools are probably going to be the best bet (either OS-based or as additional software). It's not something Dolphin should focus on, in my opinion, since other software already fills that void.

That's not to say it wouldn't be cool for Dolphin to keep stats of playtime and what was played (like the 3DS activity log).

[oioioi99]

(05-07-2017, 04:36 AM)MayImilae Wrote: Dolphin doesn't really need to worry about this... It would be better to use your operating system to impose limits like that.


That one there would be especially hard! GameCube games don't have the rating built into them, we'd have to get that from an external source. But that's also the only thing an operating system couldn't do...

Why would it be better to use the operating system? The restricted access to specific games wouldn't have to rely on game ratings. Just a simple option for parents to manually restrict access to certain games.

[oioioi99]

(05-07-2017, 05:26 AM)Helios Wrote: Also against this. It's not dolphin's problem to control what your kids can or can't do. We're emulating a console. Not trying to sell a product that appeals to a wide group.

You can easily implement this at the OS level by setting specific user accounts for your kids, and keeping the more mature games out of their user accessible folders and using third party tools to limit how long Dolphin gets to run daily.

No, of course it's not dolphins problem. On the other hand, you already go far beyond just emulating a console (you don't need a GUI to emulate a console...), and even if you are not selling Dolphin, it is not entirely unlikely that at least some of the developers might see a value in making it appealing to a wider audience. Or maybe not...

No, you cannot easily implement this at OS level, although you are certainly correct that one can implement some parental control at OS level, and third party tools could also be used.

[oioioi99]

(05-07-2017, 06:58 AM)Shonumi Wrote: 3rd party tools are probably going to be the best bet (either OS-based or as additional software). It's not something Dolphin should focus on, in my opinion, since other software already fills that void.

That's not to say it wouldn't be cool for Dolphin to keep stats of playtime and what was played (like the 3DS activity log).

Yes, third party tools can provide some more specific parental control, and I certainly also agree with you that this is not something Dolphin should focus on. The question really is how difficult/complicated would something like this be to implement? Would it take 30 minutes, or three weeks? If it takes 30 minutes it might be worth it, if it takes three weeks it obviously isn't...