Accessible Modding

Assigned Human-Computer Interaction Computer Science Games Engineering eXtended Artifical Intelligence Bachelor Master Project Thesis Games Research Lab

Background

Most publications on modding focus on aspects of design or player empowerment and growing communities. Yet, we published not only one paper on systematically analysing modding features and how current engines support them, but also another one presenting Modulith, a strong proof-of-concept engine written in C++ that allows modding all aspects of a game at runtime.

Task

Modulith is great. It provides well-targeted comfort functions to ensure that modders get the levers they desire fast. Yet, although it’s open-source and ready for deployment, it can’t shake off the impression that, in the end, its clients are expert programmers who cannot only retrace all the underpinnings that Modulith wraps so nicely but who would also be capable of implementing them themselves. Of course, providing the engineering foundation that it does might still take away quite some effort and thereby be valuable to these experts. But the real value of any engine emerges when the circle of users is expanding due to the introduced abstractions. Hence, the task of this thesis / project is to design and implement a concept to make all the hot-pluggin modding sweetness of Modulith accessible to a broader audience. You would first need to familiarise yourself with the engine and its functionalities. Next, you should systematically evaluate where which levels of abstraction and high-level functionalities should be introduced to make Modulith accessible to a wider audience. Finally, you should build novel contents that teach Modulith’s use in an interactive tutorial - how else should a flexible, at runtime re-configurable system be communicated to new users?

Literature

• Schreiner, L., & von Mammen, S. (2021, August). Modding Support of Game Engines. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (pp. 1-9).
• Götz, D., & von Mammen, S. (2023, April). Modulith: A Game Engine Made for Modding. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (pp. 1-8).
• https://github.com/Eregerog/Modulith

Contact Persons at the University Würzburg