Ok! thought of a new way to make this work...just not 100% how...

Each of the stats, increments, the mental stats, 1 resist, 1 skin, and size are all "genes"

So 28 genes (currently) overall...

Each of these genes have alleles...

Some of these alleles can be used by the whole of the kingdom, some of the family, but mostly of the species...

Each allele has a number of attributes, generally the main attribute is the one that the gene is associated with, but it can have stats effecting other areas for example...

ATK Gene = ATTC = 10 ATK, 2 HP, Red Eye color

Obviously, each of these genes also have dominance levels...

Now...instead of how it was previously where there was really only 2 alleles which results in double expression often, this allows me to have hundreds of different alleles if I want which each of that particular monster has... so there is more variation which makes breeding more realistic, controlled, and fixes that problem that some were having a problem with next generations better than the previous...

Let me add some ideas to this =) it is getting very interesting.

How about allow them to occupy different "spot" in the DNA. This can be the limiting factor when breeding.

Let us start by having 5 spot in your DNA for various genes. Different genes can occupy different spot, some can occupy more, some less.

In general, the more powerful that gene is, the more specific the spot is.

So say I want to build a monster with SUPER high attack, I might want to seek out parents that have good attack genes that occupies all 5 spots.

When a child inherits from parents, the parent's genes will be inherited into the spots, and one of them will be chosen. The other one will still be in the child, but will not be expressed.

The player should always be able to see what the expressed genes are, but should not be allowed to see the hidden genes. This can be done by skin color, etc. Perhaps you can even make the different spot represent different body parts, and each of them have different color based on what the gene in that spot is.

Just a random idea =D

I'm not sure what you mean... ZwodahS

Are you saying have a number of slots and then have it so stronger valued alleles fill up more slots?

I'm not sure how that would work because...

Genes are things that get expressed in some way.

So each gene is a "slot" and for something that needs to be expressed... for example ATK is something that needs to be expressed so there is a gene for that, but that gene has multiple alleles so that that gene could be ATK + 5 or +10 or +15, it might also express to have SPD +3... but it is all the same gene (slot)

So It's not like a gene has 5 slots and each is 1 point towards a specific stat ([HP+1, HP+1, HP+1, STM+1, STM+1] for example), though I did consider that, i think that is a bit lackluster to represent it that way... maybe for balancing but meh. I think this is akin to what you are getting at, but I'm not sure.

I also considered the body part thing. That's like 5 sets of stats/increments. That seems a bit pointless since it all goes back to the same stats and the physical features don't change. Though I would consider it if I was considering having meshes altered by that... I don't know how to do it other than having separate meshes for different body parts and then increase their scale, though that may change... Another reason I might consider redoing it is with the texture manipulation thing, but again not sure on that... Do I really want to introduce a way to completely alter the way a species looks and such? I dunno. But I might.

Something else I've been considering is the idea of gene duplication where every so often there is a gene that gets repeated. So... imagine that there would be a small chance that as you breed or capture pets, you might stumble across one with 2 ATK genes which would essentially double their ATK ability.

I also want to figure a way to incorporate negative genes... and I also have to figure out how to determine their dominance levels

As to what the player should know... As far as they're concerned I want them to only to be able to see the expressed result. As in they'll see ATK = 10, but that it might actually be ATK gene = +5 ATK, DEF gene = +2 ATK, SPD gene = - 1 ATK, HP gene = +4 ATK, ACC gene = -2 ATK, STM gene = +2 ATK... or that there is a whole other set of genes and what their values are. The closest they may get is I may introduce a way for them to get the genetic code and then they'd get a string of characters that look like a genetic code and the only way they'd have of figuring it out is doing a lot of comparisons...or cracking the game code.

Nevermind =). I suddenly think it is a bad idea, just ignore what I say =D

Good ideas or bad ideas, all ideas presented help formulate the best ideas ^.^

I wrote quite a bit but I am not sure why it isn't here... hmm let me write it again =). (if anyone saw that post in another thread, please let me know)

Firstly, let me remove the bio term since this mechanic is not really reflected in real life.

So let us call the thing that give us the stats boost or ability "Enhancement"

Each creature can have different slots for enhancement. For simplicity sake, let us use number. You can use different body parts as name for slot if you want =).

So say we have 10 slots for enhancement, different creatures can have different slot available to them.

For example, creature A may have Slot 1 3 5 7 9 while creature B have 2 4 6 8 10.

You can make the slot species based or individual based, that is up to you.

So now say we have 2 enhancement, one gives ATK+1, while the other gives ATK+30.

Since the first one is pretty weak, it can be allowed in all 10 enhancement slot.

The second one is pretty powerful, so we only allow it to occupy a specific slot, say 3.

So creature A can inherit the second ability since it has slot 3, while creature B can't

The breeding goes like this.

When 2 parents mate, you pool together all the Enhancement available for them.

Then you go through each enhancement (order to be discuss later), and for each enhancement, choose a slot to occupy, based on what is available and what is possible. So if the enhancement needs to be in slot 2 or 4 , but the creature has only slot 2 or if slot 4 is already occupied, the enhancement goes into slot 2.

The order to iterate the pool can be either be randomized or using a priority system.

On top of these, you can also have a unexpressed enhancement.

So for example, parent A have ATK+1 trait in slot 3, and an unexpressed ATK+30 trait in slot 3. When mated, the ATK+30 trait is also added to the pool of enhancements. This gives the child a chance to get the ATK+30 trait, even though both the parents doesn't expressed it. The player can deduce that one of the parent have it unexpressed, and can proceed to try to find out which one.

It is entirely up to you how much information you want to give your player =).

I personally think that this mechanic is too complicated, which is why I think is a bad idea. You can look at it and see how much of it is useful =D.

Remember, the best system is not when there is nothing to add, but nothing to remove.

This probably added too much to it.

I see what you meant now. It's coherent, but here's the problem, and why I wouldn't go with that... as it is something I roughly considered on the way to how to express it genetically.

Let's say you have 10 slots and 10 (technically 20) randomly selected enhancements. What does that mean. It means given equal probability each stat will get 1 enhancement, but we all know that that is not quite how probability works and so what will end up happening is that some stats will get multiple enhancements and some will get none so you end up with a funky stats creature rather than something that is coherent. Unless you create base stats first and then the enhancements are on top of them. In which case why do all this extra randomization work?

It's a lot of extra work for not much in return and it's just not as robust... Arguably it's also more breakable.

This is also why the slots are for a certain stat and there is a slot for each stat, so that we can get rid of the base stats and make sure each stat is being represented in some way, because genes don't have a single trait they fully express in the real world, it is often spread all over the place and several different genes add or take away what is being expressed and they all culminate to a particular feature... because that would be too complicated, setting stat type slots jumps over that and allows for all other complications to be suppressed ^.^

Sooooo like I said all ideas are helpful in creating the best idea imo, that someone else has already considered the idea in their idea, has nothing to do with whether that idea is good or not as it certainly informed the final product and further, it's always nice to know someone else's reasoning as it may bring to light some other aspect not considered originally, by a person that supposedly considered the same idea.