ViScriptTeam

A lightweight faction relationship mod for RPG maps, PVE maps, and story-driven Minecraft servers. It provides faction data, entity faction assignment, per-player reputation, inter-faction hostility, friendly-fire control, faction-aware mob targeting, and color-coded name tags.

This mod is not a replacement for the vanilla team system. It is designed as a dedicated faction layer for map makers who need to model relationships between monsters, NPCs, forces, and players.

Core Concepts

Factions

A Faction is the fundamental unit for entity assignment and player reputation. Faction IDs are automatically normalized to lowercase (e.g. Guards becomes guards).

Each faction defines:

• Default reputation points — the starting reputation every player has toward this faction.
• Neutral threshold — reputation below this value is considered Hostile; at or above this value the player is at least Neutral.
• Friendly threshold — reputation at or above this value is considered Friendly.
• Friendly fire toggle — whether same-faction entities or friendly players can damage each other.
• Attack enemy factions toggle — whether entities in this faction will actively target members of enemy factions.
• Enemy faction list — a set of faction IDs this faction considers hostile.

Default configuration:

Entity Factions

Any non-player entity can be assigned to a faction. This is intended for mobs, NPCs, guards, spawner-spawned creatures, and map-mechanic entities.

Entity faction assignment is stored by UUID, so it persists across entity reloads as long as the entity remains in the world.

Players do not use the entity faction system to express identity. Instead, player-faction relationships are expressed through per-player reputation, keeping the system flexible for future party design.

Player Reputation

Each player maintains an independent reputation score for every faction. The score determines the faction's attitude toward that player:

• Hostile — the faction considers the player an enemy. Entities in this faction will actively target the player and deal damage.
• Neutral — the faction neither attacks nor protects the player.
• Friendly — the faction considers the player an ally. Friendly-fire rules apply, and the player is protected from damage by same-faction entities unless the faction allows friendly fire.

Reputation can be set to an absolute value or adjusted by a delta, making it suitable for quest rewards, kill penalties, story triggers, and progressive reputation systems.

Parties

Parties are an independent grouping system separate from factions. They are designed for quests, dungeon instances, story events, and script-driven logic that needs to know "which players are currently grouped together."

Each party contains:

• Party ID — a unique, normalized identifier.
• Leader — the player who leads the party. If the leader leaves, the next member is automatically promoted.
• Member list — all players currently in the party.
• Friendly fire toggle — whether party members can damage each other.

A player can only belong to one party at a time. Joining a new party automatically leaves the previous one. Parties with no remaining members are automatically removed.

Inter-Faction Hostility

Hostility between factions is unidirectional. If you want faction A and faction B to be mutually hostile, you must add both directions:

• A -> B does not automatically create B -> A.

This design allows asymmetric relationships, such as a faction that is hostile toward another but is not reciprocated.

Behavior Details

Name Tag Colors

The client renders entity name tags with color hints based on the viewing player's effective attitude toward the entity's faction:

The mod does not force name tags to appear. Visibility is still controlled by vanilla mechanics or other mods (e.g. CustomNameVisible, entity name display rules, NBT data set by map makers).

Name tag data is synchronized to clients on login, respawn, dimension change, and whenever faction/reputation data is modified. If the player is in a party, the effective attitude is calculated using the party's standing strategy.

Damage Rules

The mod intercepts damage events to enforce faction and party rules as a safety net, even when custom AI or other mechanisms bypass normal target selection:

• Same party — party members cannot hurt each other unless the party has friendly fire enabled.
• Same faction — entities in the same faction cannot hurt each other unless the faction allows friendly fire.
• Player vs. friendly faction — when a player has a Friendly attitude toward a faction, neither the player nor the faction's entities can damage each other unless the faction allows friendly fire.
• Neutral — neutral relationships do not provide damage protection, but entities will not actively target neutral players either.
• Hostile — damage is always allowed.

Mob Targeting

The mod injects a low-priority faction targeting goal into all Mob entities on the server side:

• Entities without a faction assignment are completely unaffected — no extra scanning overhead.
• Entities with a faction will:
  • Actively target players who are Hostile toward their faction.
  • Actively target entities belonging to enemy factions (if the faction's "attack enemy factions" toggle is enabled).
  • Never target entities in the same faction.
• The targeting goal runs at a low priority, making it compatible with vanilla AI and most modded entities that use the standard goal system.
• A per-tick sanity check clears invalid targets and stops navigation if a mob is somehow targeting a protected entity.

For fully custom AI implementations, the mod provides FactionApi methods that can be called directly.

Party Effective Standing

Parties do not store their own faction reputation. Instead, effective standing is calculated dynamically from member reputations when the faction attitude needs to be determined.

The default strategy is min — the lowest reputation among all party members. This prevents a hostile player from joining a friendly party to bypass guard hostility, mob AI, dungeon access, or faction permissions.

Built-in strategies:

All vanilla/modded targeting, damage interception, and name tag colors use the default min strategy. Individual player reputations are always stored independently — the party is merely a runtime lens for evaluating faction relationships.

Data Persistence

All faction data, entity assignments, player reputations, and party memberships are stored in the world's saved data (attached to the overworld). This means:

• Data persists across server restarts.
• Deleting a faction automatically cleans up all associated entity assignments, player reputations, and enemy faction references in other factions.
• Party member changes are saved immediately.