Breeding and Genetics

I've just finished coding the basic structure of the breeding engine! We're still working on the genome, adding genes as we think up more features, but the machinery that will take two horses and generate a new one is complete and functioning!

The genetics system is very important to ITA Racing. We both studied genetics and want the game to be realistic and fun in this regard. We've got oodles of genes for conformation, color, markings, temperament, muscle fibers, bone density, and metabolism, just to name a few. We've tried to make this as realistic as possible, given that we haven't mapped the horse genome and there's no way we could know exactly how many genes affect every trait and in what way.

One area of horse genetics that we do understand fairly well is coat genetics. For example, we know there is one gene with two alleles that affects whether a horse is black or chestnut. We then have another gene, the agouti gene, that tells us whether a black horse is bay or not, but that doesn't affect a chestnut horse. There are other genes that only come into play on either a chestnut or a bay. We've tried to make this as accurate and interesting as we can, such that if you have a good understanding of real-world horse genetics, you should be able to breed for color (although you'll want to breed for winning races, too!) Here are some of the factors we're including for coats:

Chestnut (bright, regular, or liver)
Flaxen manes
Black
Bay
Dark Bay
Brown
Grey (which will get whiter with age!)
Dilute (which makes Buckskins, Palaminos, Cremellos, etc)
Sabino (which makes body spots, Pintos, and if you are very lucky, the rare White horse)

There are more factors we could include, like rabicano, but it's just too much art for me to make alone! For this reason, we also can't include conformation information in the horse photos, but it will be listed in your horse's information! And every horse picture will show its coat color and markings, like socks and stars, plus reflect its age, meaning there will be hundreds of unique pictures!