CS:GO & Parenting: How to Allow LAN Play Only?

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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Hey all,

Would appreciate some suggestions here.

My stepson is 8 years old. CS:GO, the game itself is fairly tame, and no worse than - say - playing cowboys and indians with his friends, so I don't have a problem with it from that perspective. That being said, I DO have a problem with him playing on servers online. I've been on many of those servers, and it gets ugly, and it is not the place for an 8 year old.

He has - however - become obsessed with the ability to play the game after watching streamers play it on YouTube. I like to support his embracing games on the PC, as opposed to the iPad or consoles so I am trying to find a workaround situation that allows him to have fun.

At first I shared my copy of the game with him in Steam (family sharing). The glorious side effect of CS when shared is, that it only allows players to play locally with bots, and the bots - apart from shooting at you - are generally pretty damned civil :p

Now I am trying to find a way such that I can play with him and a bunch of bots, but at the same time he can't play with others. I put the CS:GO dedicated server on my server, and set up a server. I figured maybe that the shared game could connect to LAN games, just not online games?

Well the problem with this is if I try to play at the same time, family sharing kicks him off, because you can only run one copy of the game at a time. No problem, I thought. I'll restart steam in offline mode on my machine, allowing him to play, and then I'll join in offline mode, since it is a LAN server only anyway. But no, Valve thought of this, and blocks CS:GO from connecting to servers when started in offline mode.

We have no problem paying for another copy of the game. It's cheap, and he has a steam wallet balance from his birthday. Problem is, if I allow him to buy it on his account, he will have access to full online play, which I can not accept.

I'm trying to figure out a good way to make this work.

Maybe if I buy the game in his account, but edit my firewall rules to block the CS:GO ports on his IP address? Is it still 27015 as it was in the old days?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Matt
 
This is very roundabout but maybe setting hud_saytext_time 0 and voice_enable 0 would be enough?

It would hide all chat and gag all mics. He'd still be able to see offensive usernames, though. But unbind Y to disallow him from opening chat and disabling sprays might be enough for you. If not good luck, definitely curious about this myself.
 
You want Counter-Strike Condition Zero. It has single player mode.
 
ZeqOBpf6 said:
This is very roundabout but maybe setting hud_saytext_time 0 and voice_enable 0 would be enough?

It would hide all chat and gag all mics. He'd still be able to see offensive usernames, though. But unbind Y to disallow him from opening chat and disabling sprays might be enough for you. If not good luck, definitely curious about this myself.
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This is exactly what I do.

I immediately turn off any voice chat if my son plays a Mp game.
 
ZeqOBpf6 said:
This is very roundabout but maybe setting hud_saytext_time 0 and voice_enable 0 would be enough?

It would hide all chat and gag all mics. He'd still be able to see offensive usernames, though. But unbind Y to disallow him from opening chat and disabling sprays might be enough for you. If not good luck, definitely curious about this myself.
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Very good tip. Thank you.
 
CS:Go... that is the big pool man, he needs to swim in the kiddie pool first. Why no Garden Warfare? Anyways, if you wanna ban lan play, remove the game's public access thru the firewall.
 
My kids (about the same age) are just getting interested in the games they see me playing cs:go being one of them. They are currently hooked on rocket league though.

If you go the internet route. With some educating on using the server browser to only join this or that server.

I have an idle go server I can pw protect or do reservations by steam id if you'd like to use it. Could have it as an invite only type of thing. It does currently have bots.



Otherwise, keeping it local. Having a dedicated/listen server and doing port blocking( like thesmokingman said) would probably be the easiest.

I should be online tonight if you wanted to chat on TS3- 72.128.102.36 p9987.
 
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ZeqOBpf6 said:
This is very roundabout but maybe setting hud_saytext_time 0 and voice_enable 0 would be enough?

It would hide all chat and gag all mics. He'd still be able to see offensive usernames, though. But unbind Y to disallow him from opening chat and disabling sprays might be enough for you. If not good luck, definitely curious about this myself.
Click to expand...

so, setting "voice_enable 0" works, but "hud_saytext_time" is an unknown command.

I've looked for others. Ignoremsg supposedly cycles through blocking text message settings, but whiule it gives you a message in that it is ignoring messages in console, messages still come through. :(

I'll have to do some more research. Those of you who have done this, how did you accomplish it?
 
It's something like that, I'm mobile but it's definitely that string, underscores probably in different places.
 
nm. had to read post a couple times


When in cycling through ignoremsg in console, you should see in the chat section the acknowledgement of ignore or accept.

For ignoremsg, make sure it displays "Now ignoring ALL messages"

You can bind it too for easier access- bind "key" ignoremsg
-exit the console then press key you used. you should be able to scroll through the ignore/accept more easily.

You can do the same for the voice in console- voice_enable 0/1
-You will need to bind 2 keys to turn it on/off- bind "key" voice_enable 0/1
 
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Could not recommend voice_enable 0 enough. But if he plays competitive mode he may need it otherwise the team may boot him from the game.

I play CS GO on and off and frankly the community is shit in and off game. If its not some teen insulting players/spamming mic chat in game in casual lobby game or competitive mode or you can't even play a round without hackers ruining the game.

Also keep your kid off the urge to buy in game skins or easily available 3rd party hacks.
 
I agree with you Matthew Kane. I was thinking the same thing. I know in casual, the admin may ask for knife only round or say something to you.. I've been burned by that because I had found it easier to just not play with sound lol.

For the voice enable. That is why i would recommend binding. To make that a little easier to turn on/off as needed.

If you find a good server with regular admins (I've been playing CMG (Casual Mature Gamers) GG server for a while and haven't had any issues), the spamming is usually to a minimum and the language is usually respectable but you may occasionally get the inappropriate for an 8yr old conversation or bombs dropped.. In comp. chat/voice is usually not horrible, but yes hackers be everywhere. I try to find friends to play with so we are on a team.
 
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