Universal Nexus Genetic Code/Chart Discussion

[Dray]

So... on the one end of the scale we have randomly generated creatures for the monthly themed giveaways, on the other, this (theoretical, at this point) universal genetic chart that would make interbreeding dragons a lot more of a science. Dr. Schroeder's secrets come to light, gasp! XD

I'm not sure what exactly we need to do to get this off the ground. Probably take into account what our specific creatures need to be defined as their own species (what makes 'em different, what's different between them?) and then we can start a sort of framework. I imagine that the end result is going to be a ridiculously long code, but like with real genetics, we can make a short-hand and a long-hand comment section to go with it.

Perhaps we can divide the chart between physical appearance (number of heads/wings, tail tip types, etc.), colouration (colour ranges, dominance of colour, patterns, where on the body is what colour), and non-visible things like abilities, egg counts, and need to bond?


I think I'm going to use my SCD mutts and Merideti for starter examples. The first are so generic, the second is a magical shape-shifting type. :D (Then once this is under way, I can give more out. Woot. XD)

[JKatkina]

XD You beast, beat me to it!

I whipped up a very rough idea of what, for example, an Askan's genetic code might have to encompass, though I haven't assigned any letters or anything yet. How's this sound? What do y'all think needs to be included, what do you think can be excluded?

ASKANS

GENERAL
Class: Mammalian (M)
Metabolism: Omnivore (o)
Body Covering1: Fur (F)
- Fur Length: Short (l)
Size (height): 3.8 - 4.9m shoulder

HEAD
Eyes: Basic
Position: Forward-facing
Iris/Sclera: Iris whole-eye
Color: Linked to Color2
Ears: long
Skullcap

BODY
Limb1: Leg, straight
- end: 5-digit hands
- claws: claws
Limb2: wings, 5-digit bat with thumb
limb3: legs
- end: 5-digit paw
- claws: claws
Tail: body length, fringe of hair

Coloration: 2-tone
Color1: White, iridescent
- area: Base tone
Color2: Red, orange, yellow, golden yellow, green, purple, blue
- area: Belly, wing membrane, long hair, skullcap, eyes

[Dray]

ATUAN MUTTS (Sub-breed: Star City Mutts)

General
Class: Reptilian (Egg-laying)
Metabolism: Omnivore (Scavenger tendencies)
Body Covering: Hide
Size (Height): 25'-30' tall

Head
Eyes: Basic (showing white sclera, iris and slit pupil)
Position: Forward facing
Iris: Not linked to other body colours; saturated
Ears: reptilian holes in the head
Other adornments: Horns, antlers, webbed or non-webbed spines are semi-common recessives. Feathers and fur are very uncommon recessives that may occur naturally without outbreeding to other species.

BODY
Limbset1: Wings, three tines from 'hand', one thumb. Webbing extends a short way down the tail. Bat-like. Other wing-types (more or less wingtines, different configuration of tines, sometimes feathers, are semi to not common recessives.)
Limbset2: Forearm/legs. Three toes, dew claws. Finger-like toes are recessive but possible. More spines/feathers are recessive. Scales are recessive but tend to get larger along the legs, like bird-leg scaling.
Limbset3: Legs. 3 toes, dew claws. More spines/feathers are recessive. Scales are recessive, as above.
Tail: Slightly shorter than body length. All kinds of recessives with the vertebrae (spines, club-tail, arrowhead tail, webbing, feathers, sometimes fur -- the last two quite rare, the former only somewhat uncommon)

COLOURS
Two colours most common: Base colour (pick anything in the hex colour radius for founder dragons. I dare you. XD) + random colour in pattern and sometimes in wing webbing. A third colour is more rare. Third colour generally linked to second colour in pattern. Fourth colour is extremely rare. 1-colour Star City mutts also uncommon.
Colours tend to blend with other colours; opposite colours will turn grey/brown. Very vibrant colours mixing will grow more vibrant to a point, then grey/black out (no neon paintballs unfortunately!)

Non-physical Bits
Bonding: Absolutely required, death is the only other option.
Life: about 150 years. May switch bonds partway through life.
Magic?: Teleportation, telepathy. Firebreath is uncommon. Elemental control is a rare recessive.
Egg Count: Commonly 3-4, Max 7.
Restrictions/Other Notes: Star City Dragon genetics are almost always recessive when out-breeding. Bonding requirement is dominant. Out-breeding with other species rarely brings detriments (can breed with hydras, wyvverns, aquatic dragons, wingless, etc.) Colours of offspring may be more vibrant, if Star City dragon's colours were more vibrant to begin with.

I think that's it!

[JKatkina]

It'd be neat to have something that denoted whether or not a gene was 'usually' dominant -- like if this was all in a database or a website, things could be dominant/recessive color coded through a spectrum, even -- like, yellow to red, with yellow being less dominant and red being more. Heck, if not color we could just do numbers...

Then we'd get to come up with rules for what happens when two dominants meet, even if they were 'soft' rules, like 'they codominate', 'half one and half the other' or 'you choose!'. :D

[Dray]

I agree... probably the biggest thing is deciding which genes are the most dominant/most recessive with outbreeding; maybe using a letter (or letter combo) for each trait, combined with a subscript number (1 being the most dominant, ??? being the most recessive -- we should decide on that... maybe something ridiculous like 50 so that something that's SUPER rare can be ear-tagged with a number that's not likely to be higher?) and a clause that states 'if equal, genes are/are not co-dominant' The second option that might be good to combine with the first being that those genes that are always co-dominant could have a little symbol that says as much. (So, for example, roan would intermingle with whatever other colour, or pattern, or both, that the offspring has, no matter how rare the other colour?)

I think the most interesting part will be in the physical features, where we're going to have so many different body builds and variations that have to be taken into account. How would we frame the genetics of an AAM beast with it's crazy-awesome variation of heads, or (for example) Drakiera's combinations of elements to create new less physical/more cerebral types of creatures?

Maybe instead of using just the typical Mendelian pairings, each trait could have up to a string of possible colour types or trait types so that multiple colours can be born in the offspring? I think that that's something that's ultimately up to the owners of the dragons, but it sounds like the easiest way to incorporate several colours. Sort of like in the Ojee with their mutations, pick two colours/traits that show, and then X number that carry but don't show, no matter what their dominance... though one could use the carried colours to slightly influence the showing colour, if they wanted to be nerdy? XD

So maybe a chart could look something like this:

General
Class: (Reptilian, Mammalian, Avian... Angellic, Alien, Fungal XD)
Metabolism: (Herbivore, Omnivore, Carnivore, Magic-ivore)
Build: (Wyrm, Wyvvern, Classical Western Dragon, Serpentine, Hydra, Caterpillar...)
Body Covering: (Hide, Scales, Fur, Feathers, Carapace, Bananaskin XD)
Size (Height at the Shoulder): (Measured in feet or meters)
Type of Birth: (Egg, Live, Bursting out of chests, magically appearing via stork)
Abilities: (Maybe the number of abilities that a dragon can have can be averaged between the parents, then each ability has the chance of being picked to fill that number of slots? XD)
Bond?: (Yes, no, via magic, via science!)

Physical Traits
Head:
-(Marking anything here of note, like eye type -- pupils, no pupils, faceted, missing, and how dominant that type of eye is for your species.)
-(Ears, horns, tongue, webbing, feathers, etc. should go here. Again, each one would have a symbol to denote what is what and how dominant it is... so while long ears might be super-dominant in one species, they might be super-rare in others. Things could get interesting if we have things like 'long ears(1)long ears(45) coming together. XD If the dragon's muzzle is shaped differently, like an infernal's underbite or a xenodragon's short-faced muzzle, that should be noted too.)
Body:
-(Listing anything here that might be interesting on the body, like belly scales, gems, tufts of fur or feathers, or anything that isn't related to colours and patterns.)
Limbs:
-(Listing things like limb-count, toe-count, wing-count and type of wing along with types of wing-tines, whether to toes are paw-like or hand-like, bipedal, quadrupedal, caterpillarapedal... XD
Tail:
-(Listing number of tails, if the tail splits part way down, spines/webbing/fur, and if there's anything on the tailtip)

Colours and Patterns:
Base Colour:
Eye Colour:
Patterns:
Pattern Colours:
Any other colours: (fur a different colour? Wing webbing? Chitinous lines of armor? Glowing danglies?)


I know I'm forgetting a lot and generalizing a bunch, but I think we could probably get a good, evolving beta from something like this. We probably wouldn't get any genetic strings... but then, having a cheat-sheet attached to each dragon's genetics makes things easier, and with something like this, making things easier seems like the best plan. :x

[Yakima]

Gonna try this for Pernese before I try anything else:

eneral
Class: going with Reptillian...not sure
Metabolism: Carnivore
Build: uh...lizard?
Body Covering: skin-like hide
Size (Height at the Shoulder): 4'-11' (rounded out)
Type of Birth: egg
Abilities: teleportation, telekinesis, empathy, telepathy, assisted firebreath
Bond?: Yes, always

Physical Traits
Head:
-facted eyes, color and "speed" changes with emotion
-head knobs, webbed-batlike wings, neck ridges
Body:
-none (that I can think of)
Limbs:
-six-limbs (two forelegs, two hind legs, two wings with 5 "fingers"), five fingers/toes on each foot
Tail:
-one tail, splits near end

Colours and Patterns:
Base Colour: gold, bronze, brown, blue, green (I really would like to try to keep the Jenaith Code somehow...it's really helpful/nice >.<)
Eye Colour: mood-oriented
Patterns: none naturally...
Pattern Colours: none naturally
Any other colours: none

There, edit as will. Pernese are pretty well known for there stats. Alskyrian, Danachian, and a few others are simple, too.

God...have no idea what to do for the Ortari yet. That's it. No more new species of dragon in Anar. Not if we do this. LOL

[Mystic Dragon]

>.> Quickly stopping in to drop off the Hathian genetics. Dray, you helped me with these years ago. I still find them useful. :)

Hathian Body Colour-Genes
HAC1 = Green + Gender Modifier = Female
HAC2 = Blue + Gender Modifier = Male
HAC3 = Red + Gender Modifier = No Effect
HAC4 = Yellow + Gender Modifier = Female
HAC5 = White + Gender Modifier = Male
HAC6 = Silver + Gender Modifier = No Effect
HAC7 = Rare (Black, etc) + Gender Modifier = No Effect

Body Colour Hue
HH = Dark
Hh = Medium
hh = Light

Hathian Horn Colour-Genes
HAH1 = Gold (from any pairing)
HAH2 = Gold (from any pairing)
HAH3 = Gold (from any pairing)
HAH4 = Silver (from HAH1/HAH4, HAH2/HAH4, HAH3/HAH4 pairings only)
HAH5 = Silver (from HAH4/HAH4, HAH4/HAH5, HAH4/HAH6, HAH5/HAH6, HAH5/HAH5 pairings only)
HAH6 = Black (from HAH4/HAH6, HAH5/HAH6, HAH6/HAH6 pairings only)

[Yakima]

*pokes Thread*

I wish I had some ideas but I'm still kinda stuck. I like the idea and I don't want to get into my genetic project to big if I have to go back and change them all. *tilts head* I learned off you guys so...XD

*scampers off to early bed*

[Dray]

I think that for something like this, even if you go deeply into your Pernese codes, these would have to be different anyways; the way I see it, this kind of could would be more like an earmark for interspecies offspring, much like what people had been doing by eye and "Hmm, let's draw/colour them like this because it looks neat!" with all the random hybridizing.

So while pure-bred Pernese dragons could have their own, more complicated code, when doing colours (for an easy example), you'd have green = most common, gold = least common.

I do see how having different builds and body types added into this would be really difficult, though. For species that all have the same body type, ranking it as 'top priority/dominance' makes perfect sense... but then all body types from all species would be most dominant. XD Not sure how to go around that problem, save to have people rate their critters on how they think the traits are going to breed out. (So while having a hide instead of fur would be the only way for a Pernese to go, on a universal chart some people might label it with a dominance of, I dunno, 10? XD ALL Pernese would have hide vs. fur so they'd all have 10, but introduce something that has a higher rating and the hide would be masked for the next generation.

O_O That sounds really long winded, but I'm not sure I can break it down into more concise chunks.

[Yakima]

No, it does make sense. So if I keep this code that I have, it won't affect what ever comes out of this? I've been trying to think of some of my other species, as well...but I first want to see the structure that's decided before that. XD

[Yakima]

Anyone still interested in this idea? I have a thought burning over here and was just seeing if anyone still wanted to float with this idea? Or let it sink. XD

[Yakima]

Okay, well, just in case, here was my idea...

http://www.wolf-mage.com/nexusgenericcode.pdf

*shrugs* Only tried it once but it seems to work well.

No, I'm not trying to undermine Dray and JKat's idea but, yeah, it was my idea.