Control Player Tension with Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment

TL;DR — A master thesis project modding Divinity: Original Sin 2 in The Divinity Engine 2 to control player tension through dynamic difficulty adjustment, adapting encounter challenge in real time to keep players in a target tension band. Includes a downloadable Steam Workshop mod, source code, the post-mortem paper, a defense presentation, and a gameplay walkthrough.

This project is an archived student project, the content here is considered obsolete.

Deliverables

Download Mod Post-Mortem Paper

Platform and Tools

Divinity: Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition Engine: The Divinity Engine 2 Working Hours: 210+ Hours

Post-Mortem Paper

The post-mortem paper documents the DDA system’s design rationale, the definition of Tension it targets, the encounter-design best practices it produced, and what worked or failed across 210+ hours of production in The Divinity Engine 2.

Defense Presentation

Gameplay Walkthrough

Cite this post

Jayden Zhang. “Control Player Tension with Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment.” Jayden Zhang’s Blog, July 1, 2020. https://www.jaydengames.com/posts/control-tension-with-dda/

BibTeX

@misc{control-tension-with-dda2020,
  author = {Jayden Zhang},
  title  = {Control Player Tension with Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment},
  year   = {2020},
  url    = {https://www.jaydengames.com/posts/control-tension-with-dda/},
  note   = {Jayden Zhang’s Blog}
}