(05-07-2017, 04:40 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: [ -> ]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.
Well, Windows 10 can address time limitations to the whole computer, but not to specific programs (it can outright block specific programs). Most parents don't mind their kids using the computer to do their homework...
Yes, separating games into different folders and using separate versions of Dolphin (one which could be blocked by the OS) is a good workaround.
And there is a such thing as feature/scope creep. You don't keep adding irrelevant features to applications that are better solved with it's own solution.
Dolphin aims to be an emulator. Dolphin does not need to babysit your kid.
(05-07-2017, 12:29 PM)Helios Wrote: [ -> ]And there is a such thing as feature/scope creep. You don't keep adding irrelevant features to applications that are better solved with it's own solution.
Dolphin aims to be an emulator. Dolphin does not need to babysit your kid.
Quite right, and a very valid objection to the implementing of any feature in Dolphin would always be that it would negatively impact emulation performance. However, this was not your initial argument. How would parental controls impact performance?
To simply dismiss a feature that you personally have no interest in (what's irrelevant to you might not be irrelevant to others...), claiming that Dolphin does not contain any features that are aimed to simply improve the experience of the Dolphin audience (which you, on behalf of the entire Dolphin community, has decided is supposed to be a small one), is based on either hypocrisy or ignorance. Anyone who has used Dolphin knows that it contains dozens of features that go far beyond simply emulating Wii games, and many of those features could easily be done with third party tools.
Cheerio,
Oi
Dolphin is open source. You are welcome to submit a PR with parental controls!
oioioi99 Wrote:To simply dismiss a feature that you personally have no interest in (what's irrelevant to you might not be irrelevant to others...), claiming that Dolphin does not contain any features that are aimed to simply improve the experience of the Dolphin audience (which you, on behalf of the entire Dolphin community, has decided is supposed to be a small one), is based on either hypocrisy or ignorance. Anyone who has used Dolphin knows that it contains dozens of features that go far beyond simply emulating Wii games, and many of those features could easily be done with third party tools.
True, if Dolphin were strictly about emulation and considering everything else irrelevant, we wouldn't have things like audio/video dumping for recording, screenshots, or even technical stuff like generating MD5 hashes for games. But there's a sort of "smell test" that new features have to pass for the rest of the dev team to accept them into Dolphin's master branch. The question isn't whether a feature is relevant to emulation at all, but rather how relevant is it to users in general. Most people like to take videos or screenshots for sharing, for example, and most people couldn't be bothered to download a 3rd party MD5 hash calculator to see if their games were good (this was actually a very big issue a few years back, when people had bad dumps of games, the forums had dozens of threads like that). So you can see why those examples were added to Dolphin.
Now about parental controls, let's just put it this way: you're the first (to my knowledge) to ask for this. So you can imagine some of us don't see this as especially relevant to other users, otherwise it'd be a common complaint (either here, or on IRC, on Reddit, or somewhere else). We can't gauge how relevant something is unless people speak up, so currently we have to go under the assumption that most people couldn't care less. Things change when there's demand, however, right now we're not seeing it outside of your requests.
I'm not trying to say parental controls are worthless and should never be considered, I'm just trying to put things into perspective. A program or a project has to limit its scope somehow, else you get what Helios said: Feature Creep. One of the ways to limit your scope is to focus on one goal (emulation in Dolphin's case) and keep extras to things that the community has been vocal about.
There have been highly requested features that we ignore because it's irrelevant for dolphin or just not our problem, or a pain in the ass to maintain.
RA core. Steam controller API implementation. Default controller mappings
Yeah, I'm not trying to imply that just because users are asking for it, that means it will get worked on and added to Dolphin. I'm just trying to illustrate that parental controls don't even reach that level of relevancy where people are constantly demanding it. And I didn't mean to imply that there was only one sort of "smell test". Code maintainability is a big one. Also being able to realistically implement something is pretty important. And can't forget about motivation...
I've rejected plenty of requested features myself because they were just too complex to reasonably handle.
(05-08-2017, 12:57 AM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]True, if Dolphin were strictly about emulation and considering everything else irrelevant, we wouldn't have things like audio/video dumping for recording, screenshots, or even technical stuff like generating MD5 hashes for games. But there's a sort of "smell test" that new features have to pass for the rest of the dev team to accept them into Dolphin's master branch. The question isn't whether a feature is relevant to emulation at all, but rather how relevant is it to users in general. Most people like to take videos or screenshots for sharing, for example, and most people couldn't be bothered to download a 3rd party MD5 hash calculator to see if their games were good (this was actually a very big issue a few years back, when people had bad dumps of games, the forums had dozens of threads like that). So you can see why those examples were added to Dolphin.
Now about parental controls, let's just put it this way: you're the first (to my knowledge) to ask for this. So you can imagine some of us don't see this as especially relevant to other users, otherwise it'd be a common complaint (either here, or on IRC, on Reddit, or somewhere else). We can't gauge how relevant something is unless people speak up, so currently we have to go under the assumption that most people couldn't care less. Things change when there's demand, however, right now we're not seeing it outside of your requests.
I'm not trying to say parental controls are worthless and should never be considered, I'm just trying to put things into perspective. A program or a project has to limit its scope somehow, else you get what Helios said: Feature Creep. One of the ways to limit your scope is to focus on one goal (emulation in Dolphin's case) and keep extras to things that the community has been vocal about.
I am very much in agreement with you. And yes, I also believe that I am the first to suggest the implementation of parental controls. Someone is always the first, and that was the very purpose of this thread
I just wanted to float the idea...
I'm all for "smell tests," and if parental controls is something that a very small number of Dolphin users are interested in (and there is no interest in expansion within demographics where it might carry more interest), then it obviously should be considered a very low priority (or, better, not a priority at all). Other factors to be considered should be how complicated/time consuming it would be to implement, and if it would have a negative impact on emulation performance or on user experience as a whole. I have absolutely no problems with any of these arguments... It's obviously the job of the developers to ask these questions, and make these decisions.
My objection was just Helios rejection of the idea based on his/her personal lack of interest in it, and some ridiculous idea that Dolphin cannot contain features that are not directly related to the emulation of Wii games, when it is pretty obvious to all of us that it already does.
Anyway, I think we may have exhausted this topic...
Cheers,
Oioioi
What you could do is dump your Wii's NAND and use the Wii's built in Parental Controls. It wouldn't work for GameCube games, but it would be a good solution. (Or it would be, but you can't prevent the user from just launching the game directly, so it is a moot point) I am also not sure if the Parental Controls even work within Dolphin. Leoetlino is the person to ask about that, if it doesn't work. It might be potentially a useful feature to have the user be locked into the Wii Menu, but the regular Dolphin menu be behind a password.