Master’s Thesis – Protean Theme Manager

As part of my Master’s Thesis “The Protean Theme Manager for A/B Testing in Virtual Environments – Design, Implementation, and Evaluation in the Context of Virtual Green Space Effects”, I created the Protean Theme Manager. The first implementation of a Unity Editor Tool that facilitates the creation of comparable VEs and is targeted at the people most often doing A/B testing: researchers and game developers. It allows storing themes and switching between them. In the video, the theme manager is shown in action, whereas in the screenshots, one can see the Theme Manager once with the theme settings expanded, and once collapsed. This tool supports switching prefabs, but also materials, audio clips, and sprites. Those object categories can be switched all at once or separately, giving the user more control. Moreover, the theme manager works with the most relevant Unity versions, including the latest long-term support (LTS) version, Unity 2020.3. On top of all that, the theme manager only has dependencies on functionality already integrated into the latest releases of Unity. Thus, there is no need to install any other plugins or SDKs.