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Old-Doomguy

Collection of kid friendly mods?

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Hi all 

 

My son (6 yr) has become increasingly interested in Doom classic. I want him to play it but the wife is of the opinion that it's a little too violent. And maybe it is, they core gameplay revolves around slaughtering demons with the most satisfying weapons in any game ever. 

 

So I was thinking about getting some mods that make it more friendly for kids without changing the gameplay all too much. Ie it should still be an fps game. 

 

(So the sonic mod isn't interesting)

 

He loves star wars so I was thinking about the Dark forces mod. Is that one without blood and gore, like the regular star wars games?

 

Are there any other mods/wads that retains the fps genre but with reduced or zero gore?

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How about it's still Doom, but less FPS and more first-person hangout?

 

Mr. Friendly is to Doom what Mister Rogers is to PBS. Imagine just chilling in these haunted landscapes with your demon friends, getting to know them before maybe gibbing them years later. Yes, you can actually talk to the demons! And solve their humdrum everyday problems like a good neighbor.

Aside from that, I second Adventures of Square, the Wool Ball mods, and anything Chex Quest. Failing that, there's probably some jump-maze mods out there if the kid wants to learn some coordination and mad skillz.

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I was actually in a similar situation. My son is 7 and my wife was iffy at first that I let him play classic Doom with me because she also thought that it was somewhat violent for a 7 year old kid but she is ok with it now. He actually just finished beating Knee-Deep in the Dead on ITYTD  last week all by himself ( Well I was right next to him the whole time coaching) and he loved it so Im planning on playing custom wads with him next but more kid friendly ones like Mayhem17 (Mario themed), The Alfonzone and TC's like Golden souls and The adventures of square come to mind. Theres also some good mods like Combined Arms and Combined arms Gaiden that give it a more 90's nintendo vibe to the game. I hope you can find something for your kid to play so you wont have trouble at home, whish you luck man.

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What if there are mods that take away the blood and gore? I don't know any, but I'm sure there are some that exist. Maybe like when you kill the imp, it does the chex quest thing where it teleports to another world. Also, since he is 6, you could tell him that their candy bars, and your shooting red sugar at them, and when they die, they actually just turn into cake. 

 

I think that it's very sweet that you want to play with your son. I love when my dad plays mario kart and other games with me.

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Yeah it's not that he's new to gaming - he's been playing since he was two. We've beaten tons of Lego games on the ps3 and ps4 and some Mario games and Scooby-Doo on Wii and Wii u. We even steamrolled that Snoopy game that was released a few years back. And Disney infinity 3.0!

 

But he saw me play doom and he really wants it now. And I feel that he has to learn mouse and keyboard before he jumps on the bandwagon and begins playing Fortnite or whatever will be popular in a few years. 

 

My goal is that he should be an educated gamer and he should know the history of gaming. 

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Doom by todays standards isn't really that violent, I would allow your kid to play the original once he's 10+ years old.

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1 hour ago, maxmanium said:

Tangential, but this thread triggered a memory of an old machinima video:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

LOL!

Really good, pal!
Kids are way hardcore than us at their age.

Reallistic killing games give me goosebumps sometimes.

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6 hours ago, Old-Doomguy said:

He loves star wars so I was thinking about the Dark forces mod. Is that one without blood and gore, like the regular star wars games?

Spoiler

 

 

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7 hours ago, LiT_gam3r said:

What if there are mods that take away the blood and gore?

That's a good idea actually. Like the opposite of Brutal Doom if you want to introduce the greatest game of all time to a child but without the violent aspect while keeping things Doom. With DECORATE and a little texture replacement work, it would be easy to accomplish. You could even put the file into global autoload so it always runs when you try to launch it. I don't think the Demons on their own are even that scary either, so you wouldn't need to change monster sprites, just skip over the death animation and do something else instead.

 

If I find myself with nothing to do, I'll see about making a kid friendly Doom de-violent mod.

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8 minutes ago, Nevander said:

That's a good idea actually. Like the opposite of Brutal Doom if you want to introduce the greatest game of all time to a child but without the violent aspect while keeping things Doom. With DECORATE and a little texture replacement work, it would be easy to accomplish. You could even put the file into global autoload so it always runs when you try to launch it. I don't think the Demons on their own are even that scary either, so you wouldn't need to change monster sprites, just skip over the death animation and do something else instead.

 

If I find myself with nothing to do, I'll see about making a kid friendly Doom de-violent mod.


Maybe they just zap into other place, like Chex quest.

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So, there are a lot of fantastic recommendations here already that don't require any alterations or anything, but I'm torn about recommending The Golden Souls 2 as well as the MarioDoom mod because they are still technically as violent as Doom is, but the environments and 'vibe' is still far less oppressive, scary, spooky and unsettling as the original Doom maps and music combination.

 

My parents let me play Doom as young as 3 years old (well, it was the hot new game and they knew I loved Wolf3D) but I guess they never cared much about censorship so long as they taught me right from wrong. I don't mean to soapbox, my intention is by no means to change you or your wife's minds, rather I just want to recall my own experiences as a single-digit kid playing a whole lot of Doom. I can say that until I was about 9, the official Doom maps and MIDIs definitely did spook me out to some degree, and the "sweet little dead bunny" of the first Doom ending flat out terrified me, I refused to ever beat E3 or E4 specifically to avoid any decapitated-bunny related visuals, rofl.. (hilarious recalling this as someone approaching 30, and none of this stopped me from wanting to mod the game even at an early age..)

 

Anyway, forgive my rambling, I promise there's a point to it all. I was frankly obsessed with mods like Simpsons Doom and Dragonball Doom as a kid because I loved those shows so much, and they made the whole thing feel so fun and goofy that any trace of "unsettling" stuff in unmodified Doom was completely negated. In my single digit years, I would have gone completely ape shit, in a good way of course, for something like Golden Souls 1 & 2, MarioDoom, Pirate Doom, and many others I'm forgetting despite that they are technically the same level of violence as Doom (shooting stuff til it becomes a bloody mess). So, maybe in 2-3 years, if your wife softens on the issue a bit, he can play some of the less "oppressive" Doom content, despite the blood factor.

 

..It's by no means a perfect fix, but I've whipped up this palette modifier that changes ALL of the Red colors to be Green instead. Alternatively, here's a wad with all of Doom2's sprites, but with all of the gory or bloody elements either colored green or wholly removed. Both should work in vanilla or most ports. I welcome anyone to expand upon these or make them better.

 

Naturally, this isn't a perfect solution - there's a lot of non-blood stuff that needs to be red to be visually accurate - but hey, it's a start, and it's compatible with most ports. Maybe "green alien blood" will at least be a little more acceptable? I dunno. If you load Red2Green.wad over top of any other mods, or CensorV1.wad over any other "normal doom" map packs, unless they have some crazy palette stuff going on, it should do the job it intends to.

 

Anyway, please forgive the rant, I hope this is at least of some help to you!

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Going to go with everyone else and say Adventures of Square is the best choice for a family-friendly Doom game. That or Chex Quest.

If your wife has a problem with those, well...there's ALWAYS Mario and Sonic games out there to play.

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As someone who also played Doom from being an 8 year old, I found in retrospect that it was essential in helping to establish that barrier between fiction and reality. My parents hands-off approach was an instructive tool in that regard. The danger over children playing violent video-games is only when they fail to establish this distinction, at least in my opinion.

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So the kid really enjoyed Square. But it's a tad too difficult with both jumping, freelook and crouch. A bit overwhelming. Will try that Voxeldoom as well :)

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