How to enable Modding for your game

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone had any links to resources to setup and implement a modding system for a unity game.

I am wanting to create a game from the start with the intention to allow the community to mod the game.

 

It depends a lot on the game, the target platform and what kind of mods you want to allow.

In essence, anything you want to make moddable needs to be data-driven, meaning configuration files (typically JSON). You need runtime importers for art and audio assets if you want to support those. You need either a scripting interface (ie Lua) if you want to allow mod scripting. Alternatively an interface for writing .NET DLLs in C# but unless you wrap each and every Unity class/struct (including things like Vector3) yourself the modders will have to have Unity installed in this case.

 

Probably the absolute easiest way to make a game modable is to make it an open project on github or something like that. Then anyone can just download your project and make whatever modifications they want in Unity.

The obvious downside is that you won't be able to include any store bought assets in the project.

 

Build your game around MiniScript — an easy-to-learn scripting language that was originally designed for exactly this purpose.