[Kyttias]

breeding

There will be no cost to breed.

Novu are dream creatures and their young are born from dream dust. Even two Novu of the same apparent gender can create new life together! Courtship trinkets should be obtained and brought to the ceremony to be exchanged. The two Novu must then simply perform a ritual dance with one another. Together, they'll begin to shimmer and dream dust will fall from their fur. Once the dance is complete, all the need to do is bring their combined dust to a Pool of Ancestry to bring it to life.

genetics

Genetics in Novul will make use of what's known in real world genetics as "Punett Squares". In genetics, a "trait" is made up of "alleles". They are usually two of the same letters, either capital or lowercase or mixed. If one capital exists, the gene is expressed; same for two capitals--A is "dominant". However, if they're both lowercase, the gene is not expressed--a is "recessive". In other words, AA and Aa would both show the gene and aa would not. A child takes one allele from each parent, and which one it takes is random; so an AAxAA would only produce AA, but an Aa x Aa could produce an AA, Aa, or aa.

For Novul, there will be 4 tiers of genetics. Tier 1 will be one trait/two alleles (Aa), Tier 2 will be two "traits"/four alleles (AaBb), Tier 3 (AaBbCc), and Tier 4 (AaBbCcDd). First, the gene is chosen with simple probabilities. Tier 1 is the most common, with Tier 4 the most rare; breeding a lower tier with a higher tier will get you more low-tier babies. Simple patterns and patternless will (likely) be Tier 1, with more complicated patterns climbing up the tiers. Once the gene is selected, we move onto determining its opacity.

There are several levels of opacity--full, high, half, low, and "none" (extremely low). The levels of opacity are determined by whether or not you have a dominant allele in each trait. Having a dominant allele in every trait gets you full opacity, having no dominant allele in any trait gets you "none" opacity. Whether you have one capital or two capital in each trait is irrelevant; all that matters is the number of unique traits with dominant alleles. For example, Tier 1 has full (1) or none (0); and Tier 4 has full (4), high (3), half (2), low (1), and none (0).

Users won't get to see the exact 'DNA' of their Novu to know if it has recessive or dominant genes (at least not for free), and all they really need to know is that these things determine the chance and degree of their Novu's genetics passing on. There is a chance for all things, it simply gets more common in certain situations.

coding progress

Today is the day I actually begin rewriting the code to implement said proposed genetics and gender-free breeding. Courtship trinkets will follow. @_@;;