Enemy and Troop Revamp

[Kaliya]

I often see people post about being able to do additional things with enemies and troops, such as give them levels, or treat them more like actors. There are even a few threads in this section about various different aspects of improving said systems. This is more of a compilation of these threads and ideas. The ideas shared and discussed here will also be the basis for a more encompassing improvement proposal to the team as well if given enough votes.

The purpose of this proposal will be to improve upon the aspects of enemies and troops in a manner that maintains maximum compatibility with current games and most plugins. The way that will be done will also be discussed when necessary.

Description of the Feature:

• Enemy Types (as suggested by @Andar ) - Allow for enemies to have "types", such as "angel", "demon","ice",etc. Which would allow for additional event commands that use this type, or weapons/items/skills that are more effective against this type e.g "demon slayer sword" which would be more effective against "demon" types. (NOTE: The latter is already technically possible, but this would give way to another way of doing it or being more....obvious with it I guess)
  
• Enemy Levels (not really the same as this by @trexmaster8242) - Allow for enemies to have a "level range". With said level range it would allow the creator to make enemies know different attacks depending on the level. It may also allow the creator to give enemies different drop tables based on the level. This will also give more options for certain event commands.
  
• Stat Curves (incorporation with Enemy Levels) - Much like actors and classes this will allow enemies to have different stats based on their level. I've noticed some people have concerns about balancing being a problem with this, but we will discuss that a bit later. This would allow for enemies to dynamically scale and get a bit harder based on their level.
  
• Better Drop table management - Allow for more than three drops at maximum, as well as the aforementioned loot depending on an enemies level.
  
• General AI Improvements - The AI Isn't the smartest, and it could use a little bit of work. We could try to work on that here.
  

Code for Implementation:
I haven't started yet .

Mockups:
None yet, I may implement the editor UI for this to illustrate it in my spare time.

Why is this feature good?
An enemy and troop revamp would be good because, it would allow for more dynamic enemies and thus more dynamic fights. It would help with creation of an RPG that would use these features by not having to source or create plugins and use complicated and unnecessary notetags.

Possible issues with this feature?
Compatibility issues with currently being developed projects, and well quite frankly some plugins may become obsolete or less used.

How will we deal with compatibility?
Below I will discuss ideas to deal with compatibility issues with current projects or plugins in a QA/FAQ fashion.

Q: How will you handle enemy levels for existing games in troops and maps?
A: For current projects, all enemies by default will have a level of 1. The enemies current stats will remain the same as defined by the user, and the maximum level for an enemy will be 1. It will be up to the user to set a new maximum level and stat curves for anything higher than a level 1 encounter of that enemy.

Q: How will "enemy types" be handled for existing enemies?
A: This is quite simple, a default type of "none" will be added, and all enemies will have "none" as their type by default.

Q: How will troops be handled for enemy levels?
A: Much like handling default enemy levels, all troops will remain the same as they are now. As if they just all have level 1 variants of the enemy in them. When adding new enemies to the troops the user will be able to specify a level for the enemy to add up to the maximum level of the enemy. Users may even be able to specify a level range with different probabilities of occurring for the enemies in the troops, so users will not have to spend so much time setting up additional troops.

Q: Balancing the new stat curves for enemies will be hard, or a pain.
A: That really isn't the job of the engine, but the job of the creator. It is up to the creator to decide what is "balanced" for their game. It is up to the engine to allow the user to balance their game using the tools provided by the engine. That isn't to say the curves system currently in place is good enough or perfect, maybe it could use some additional features of its own but this topic isn't for that.

You are all welcome to propose additional ideas, or changes to ideas. The more discussion this has the better.

Thanks for reading and please don't forget to vote!
- Liquidize

 

[Poryg]

I second this. While people can work out many things, enemies and AI are one of the hardest things to manipulate. So having an official update on it would be greatly appreciated!

 

[kovak]

This is pretty damn good, really.
We have plugins for those features but having this in the editor changes everything.

The Ai part could be better if it was based on both yanfly's and Galv's AI plugins i guess.

 

[xdan]

Enemy AI is really lacking in RPGM. I had to use two separate scripts just to stop them from reviving already alive targets. There is a loooot of work to do here.

 

[feckyeslife]

I'm all for the Type system and improving enemy AI. The other features, I've already found my work-arounds in Yanfly plugins but it would be nice to have them implemented directly in the sort of "optional" way that you mentioned where each enemy needs to be altered to have more than one level. Full support.

 

[TheRiotInside]

Good ideas! I think a fairly straightforward way to implement this would be to basically treat each enemy like a class. You can set stat curves, skills at certain levels, all of the features already given to actor classes. This would work nicely along with an expanded condition set for AI. As is, without plugins there isn't a whole lot you can do to make your enemies appear intelligent.

I'm no expert, but you know how events have different pages with conditions for each of them to run? And if two pages' conditions are met it uses the order to determine which page gets priority? Something like this for AI would be super rad. The conditions would be an elaborated version of what exists now like, HP below X, inflicted with State Y, previously damaged by Z, with some more detailed conditions thrown in there. Each page would have a list of actions in the "event command" area with probabilities (having to add to 100) to handle what skills or commands get executed when the conditions are met. Some brief conditional stuff would have to be thrown in there for skill targeting as well, so you could specify who to use the listed actions on and whatnot, but with enough conditions you could make really smart-seeming enemies pretty easily.

So basically, each enemy gets a Class page, and a set of Event-like pages for different conditions and their corresponding set of actions. It would take more work, but it would feel intuitive to most developers who are already used to making classes and setting up events with Conditional Branches and different pages with conditions and all that.

 

[Alastor01]

Customized AI is a really required future. Would be nice to make AI management similar to events. For example, you can use if / elif / else / while / for etc conditions and assign different actions - attribute changes, skill usage, target change...

 

[Dungeonmind]

This sounds like a great idea. Leaving more options than limits for the creator of the project. I’ll vote yes and I hope this gets implemented.

 

[dbchest]

i have to manually make references between actors and enemies using note tags to accomplish the features i need for Beast Masters. the improvements being discussed here would go a long way towards making a more flexible system for future versions of Beast Masters. i say yes.