Feature Request: Content Filter

[jadwight]

I'd donate $$$ to someone who would develop an ability to turn on and off a word censor, and ability to disable swearing of any kind during gameplay. I recently turned down my amount of gameplay simply because my 8 year old repeated some stuff he read... not heard, but actually read what someone typed on the screen and turned around and repeated it. When questioned about where he learned it, come to find out from looking over my shoulder and reading immature ramblings displayed across the chat.

I just think an ability to turn a censor on locally on the physical machine would be a viable remedy to those who don't want profanity and vulgarity without imposing their point of view upon someone else who is just being their natural vulgar self... lol

[restcoser]

The question is, if you are concerned about the development of your 8 (!) year old child, should he/she be playing the game at all? Don't you think that if you are already worried about chatter, your worries should be more focused against the violence in this game? My opinion is, word filters should be made for games made for younger generations, but Red Eclipse is clearly not made for that audience.
Edit: Ops, I probably changed some stuff up. Is it you playing the game or your child? Think I misread something, if it is you playing, then the feature request would make sense

[TheLastProject]

The easiest way to get rid of the issue for now would be to type "/chatconblend 0", which will make the chat invisible. This is not a perfect solution, though, as it will cause issues when you are supposed to follow moderator instructions, for example. I'll see if I can hack at the code a bit today, although I don't expect any luck myself. I do agree that this could be an useful feature, as long as it's disabled by default and done client-side.

[qreeves]

restcoser: Let us please stay on topic and not turn this into a discussion about what is appropriate for children. This is a feature request thread.

jadwight: Due to the nature of the game, it hasn't been a high priority. That being said, if you're serious and want to sponsor the feature, give me a price you're comfortable with and if it is reasonable enough I will implement it immediately.

[TheLastProject]

if it is reasonable enough I will implement it immediately.

It's either that, or waiting for me to figure out how Red Eclipse's chat code works for the coming few months (with a big chance of "I can't figure this out") :P
Also, quin, can we like, put the list of swear words in a persistent variable assuming this happens? It'd be great if people could choose themselves what should be filtered and what not (although I expect you to do it that way anyway).

[qreeves]

I was thinking a client "messagefilter “ and server "sv_messageblock" (so family friendly servers can work). Just need to realise that this type of game attracts this sort of behaviour so it isn't my top priority to deal with it; you're always going to have issues with abusive/vulgar people in and FPS game.

[Dratz-_C]

Quin, jadwight,
I would use such a filter. I could not offer much as a donation in return, just the few bucks that is left in my paypal account. However at least it is something. [Edit: I have just donated slightly more than the last time I donated.]
Cheers

[bonifarz]

I have seen "bad word" filters in other games, and I have the impression this will not be complicated to implement. (Taking a look at the bad word lists there made me laugh, as they tried to replace the words instead of filtering them, which can result in quite absurd phrases.) A lesser annoyance for setting up the word lists are misspelled variants or leetspeak ("fu¢k you"), but the weirder the spelling, the smaller the chances a kid will catch it.

[qreeves]

Okay, well it would take me about six hours to implement, including testing; so the "immediate implementation ransom" is $30, Dratz has donated $3 (of which RE got $2.60 and Paypal got 40c), so I suppose you have $27 to go, these are Australian dollars by the way. If you want a point release to be issued including this update, please add another $20 (cheaper alternative: use SVN).

That being said, an even cheaper alternative: you can always just put it on the bug tracker and wait until a later date (probably 1.5 [2013/Q4]).

[bonifarz]

[...] six hours [...] $30

Estimating monetary values or "reasonable enough" donations is a very tricky thing. I think the work Quin, Eihrul and others have done for this project is invaluable.

I wonder if you have noticed the development cost estimates on ohlo... such simplistic models are not quite meaningful, yet the numbers can be surprising. The estimate for the RE code base is about 2.4M$.

[qreeves]

[...] six hours [...] $30

Estimating monetary values or "reasonable enough" donations is a very tricky thing. I think the work Quin, Eihrul and others have done for this project is invaluable.

I wonder if you have noticed the development cost estimates on ohlo... such simplistic models are not quite meaningful, yet the numbers can be surprising. The estimate for the RE code base is about 2.4M$.

Well, that is about $5 an hour, or 10% of what I'd get in a paid job doing the same thing here in AU. It seemed fairly reasonable to me, seeing as it is mostly only for getting me to implement it immediately rather than later on an Open Source project.

[jadwight]

So give me a couple days, I'll drop $30 on it, I'm assuming using the donate button on red eclipse's main page right quinn? and I'll continuously donate for a period of time...

@Restcoser:
as for the earlier comment about what's appropriate for kids or not... this has little to do with what's appropriate or not, but rather to do with the fact that some people don't really care for it (even grown people). Yes, you run into it in many games, but I know lots of people who would be more apt to play Red Eclipse with a word censor than play Halo without one... just because there are actually people who don't care for it... My goal isn't just to support those who would like to have one for the sake of kids, but also as an enhancement to the game due to it having the ability, and it simply will have a "one up" on other games...

I've seen some Red Eclipse servers where people say "No Swearing" and so this also is an added benefit to them as well, and this feature would allow players who just naturally are used to speaking with profanity not be offensive or have to bite their tongue because people can just turn the censor on if they don't care for it. My thought was rather than server owners making players feel like they don't have the freedom to express themselves in a server with the worry of getting booted, they can speak however they wish, and end-users would have the ability to just simply have it turned into asterisks or what not...

I know there are people who think "well, that's life, and that's tough and get over it", but I can count on 4 hands, names of people right now who would play this game if such a feature existed. It also would allow a game reviewer to speak highly of the game with the ability to tell people that there is a feature for that, which opens the game up to parents being able to say "hey, my kid likes shooting games too, and I know a game that has a language filter..." now you have another game player....

So this isn't just about "Got to have it because I want my kids to be able to play", but rather the issue is that not many games have this feature, and more people might allow their children to play, therefore also increasing attention to the game, attracting more players, enlarging the community. With the enlargement of community you usher in more support, more contributions, more growth by word of mouth, etc...

A true supporter needs to go beyond the shallow minded vision of "It's just this way", but rather have the larger vision of "How can we get more attention to this very excellent game."

I personally envy the works quinn has put in, and most definitely appreciate the hours I KNOW he spends on Red Eclipse (I know it has to be more than most players could probably fathom). As supporters of the game and as die-hard players we need to do our part of contributing ideas, finances, works, etc. that would allow the hard work of developer(s) to reach a larger audience, which can be done by allowing the game to be morally universal, creation of more textures, maps, trailer videos, graphic banner advertisements, youtube videos, word of mouth, there is just many ways that we can promote Red Eclipse, and we should use as many as we can facilitate... I'm just trying to do my part, and that was giving an idea with a cause, and of course my next step is dropping $30 where my mouth is, and supporting my own request... who knows, perhaps months or years up the road I may be dropping $30 on your feature request...

[ballist1c]

As an op, I do say "watch your language" whenever someone swears. However, i too admit to swearing online, however hypocritical it makes my words seem; it's part of my upbringing and I don't do it much, but I sincerely apologize if i have accidentally offended you or others indirectly.

[jadwight]

lol, it's not much like that though Ballistic. I personally don't get offended by it. My wife sometimes does... But then I thought wait a minute... There's an idea!

So what I planned on doing was this:

Step 1... Speak the Idea
Step 2... Hope to gain verbal support of the Idea
Step 3... Donate to implement the idea (put my money where my mouth is)
Step 4... Once idea is implemented, Tell everyone I know that there is this great game, and it has the option to make it "family friendly". And my hope is that it will open up a new avenue for more people to play the game and get a little more activity going (especially during those hours when only 4-6 people are on... lol

Also, I know a few reviewers whom I would speak highly of this game to if it had that feature (because they review things as an attempt to find "Family Friendly" products, and RE may be able to gain some free advertisement through them once this is in place, and I'm not talking about small-time bloggers either, but rather decent sized organizations...

[jadwight]

so reeves, I just wanted to confirm that I should use the donate button, or if theres another method you want me to use that marks that donation as being for this purpose?

[qreeves]

so reeves, I just wanted to confirm that I should use the donate button, or if theres another method you want me to use that marks that donation as being for this purpose?

Donation button is the best place, I follow up with everyone who donates (to offer supporter credits and accounts).

[jadwight]

cool thanks. Bruce said he dropped approx 25 torwards it as well... I'll drop some after I get paid...

[jadwight]

just dropped $30... I used my CC instead..

[qreeves]

Basic implementation is now in SVN at r5576. Needs testing, and probably some refinement. Also could use a tweak to the way the chat system works, so that messages are not printed locally until parsed and returned by the server (unfortunately this will incur a lag penalty), which I have noted in ticket #530. Thank you for sponsoring this feature, I've emailed you details on obtaining credit and a supporter key.

[jadwight]

so is this in the SVN? I downloaded the SVN for Mac, but the game actually crashed when I went into Options and then User Interface...

this is what Terminal gave back:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

Thu Apr 18 23:15:14 2013 attempting to use resources in: /Users/jadwight/redeclipse-svn/bin/redeclipse.app
2013-04-18 23:15:14.585 redeclipse[8974:903] Error loading /Library/QuickTime/AviImporter-r7 (ppc).component/Contents/MacOS/AviImporter:  dlopen(/Library/QuickTime/AviImporter-r7 (ppc).component/Contents/MacOS/AviImporter, 262): no suitable image found.  Did find:
   /Library/QuickTime/AviImporter-r7 (ppc).component/Contents/MacOS/AviImporter: mach-o, but wrong architecture
2013-04-18 23:15:14.598 redeclipse[8974:903] Error loading /Library/QuickTime/AviImporter-r7 (ppc).component/Contents/MacOS/AviImporter:  dlopen(/Library/QuickTime/AviImporter-r7 (ppc).component/Contents/MacOS/AviImporter, 262): no suitable image found.  Did find:
   /Library/QuickTime/AviImporter-r7 (ppc).component/Contents/MacOS/AviImporter: mach-o, but wrong architecture
2013-04-18 23:15:14.599 redeclipse[8974:903] Error loading /Library/QuickTime/AviImporter-r7 (ppc).component/Contents/MacOS/AviImporter:  dlopen(/Library/QuickTime/AviImporter-r7 (ppc).component/Contents/MacOS/AviImporter, 262): no suitable image found.  Did find:
   /Library/QuickTime/AviImporter-r7 (ppc).component/Contents/MacOS/AviImporter: mach-o, but wrong architecture
Fatal signal 11 (Segmentation Violation)


[qreeves]

No, I am no longer able to produce working OSX builds (blame Apple, they deprecate everything - and if you're on PPC beware, all software is going to drop support for it eventually). q66 does them for us at the moment, I'm waiting to work with him to improve our Makefile for true cross platform compilation support.

[jadwight]

ahhh I see. I'm on Intel so we are good there. When I first made the switch to mac, I was leery about PPC, and so I've always used the intel machines. Eventually I'll probably end up with a dual-boot machine, or a separate machine to run Windows stuff again... I wish I knew how to program, I'd be all in to help..