I remember typing a suggestion about the team system to the Discord channel a year and a half ago. After a year or so, I realized that the foundation of this system was added. Even though it is very basic like "enemy and player" teams, it is still an AMAZING tool to do many things like summoner characters, companions, and wildlife in grid-movement. Now, this is my follow-up suggestion to the one that I made long ago.
Teams system should have its own tab next to the stats tab when we are in the npc editor. This tab should have the following:
Name of the Team: [Text field]
Behavior to the player team [Drop-down menu that is connected to saved NPC behaviors v]
A plus button that says "Add more teams" will add an empty team box with its own drop-down menu to choose from the previously created teams globally. Once the player chooses one team, then it should behave like the "Behavior to the player team [Drop-down menu that is connected to saved NPC behaviors v]".
Explanation with examples:
Default teams:
Team: Player
Team: Enemy
Created teams:
Team: Predator
Team: Farm animals
Created behavior(this is the regular behavior system in RPG in a box):
Behavior: Fully hostile all the time and chases the members of the set team (for ex: player)
My suggested system:
Predator is [Behavior: Fully Hostile] to Player
Predator is [Behavior: Fully Hostile] to Farm animals
This system allows people to create an environment where a wolf[Predator] can spawn at night time and can be seen attacking a chicken[Farm animal] if the player[Player} gets in range of the wolf, if the chicken dies or far away from the wolf, then the wolf starts to attack the player. Also, if we want to make it even more realistic, we can create another behavior[non-hostile until attacked] that the farm animal has that makes it so that if the player kills the wolf and proceeds to attack the chicken, the chicken can fight back.
Another aspect of this addition to RPG In a Box would allow players to not only make ranged, magic, and mele combat, but also make players to have the ability to create SUMMONING. Most RPGs have some kind of a summoning system. This could be summoning some angels that follow you and heal you and can be killed by enemies, requiring you to re-summon them, or it can be a small army of skeletons that fight against the NPCs that are in the default enemy team.
In the future, if this system is implemented, the next step would be to allow us to play with a team's AI in a more detailed way. For example, if we have a SUMMONS team and a PLAYER team, we should be able to make the ENEMY team prioritize attacking the members of the SUMMONS team before the PLAYER team.
With this, we can create more complex npcs. For example, we can focus on the wolf example again. If we add a goat and make the team [farm_animals_who_fight_back], we can make the wolf prioritize chickens [Farm_animals] and then after the wolf kills chickens, it can attack the goat.
Unrelated NOTE: If you are reading this Justin, please don't forget about the "free movement NPCs" haha 😊 It would definitely level up the engine.
Unrelated NOTE 2: I have posted 2-3 bug reports with videos and in the correct text format. These bugs are crucial.