EDIT: to those concerned about gene bloat: this post was originally enormous when i first wrote it, and contained discussions of how things worked in my dream vs how i thought they should actually work. i thought that was a silly thing to include in a suggestion, and i forgot that wall of text contained my entire concept for how the gene scrolls should work.
so i'm putting it back at the bottom, with added mockups. those concerned about gene bloat should read the BOTTOM of this post, because i hate gene bloat too and wouldn't have suggested this if i didn't have a solution for that.
this suggestion is brought to you by a dream i had.
tl;dr: genes that are copies of existing genes, but with an inverted colour palette. and i mean cntrl+i inverted, invert(100%) inverted.
these genes would invert the colours in the sense that the colour palette for these genes would simply be inverted.
in much the same way that pharaoh/sarcophagous makes all primary/secondary genes black regardless of their colourwheel colour, and the new chrysocolla/malachite genes have their own colour palette that ignores the colourhweel entirely.
seriously, this is hunter, not eggplant.
so these would, mechanically, be ordinary genes just like any other.
they'd simply have very different colours than the colourwheel name would make you expect:
(inverted mockups missing the gradient because that would be a pain to mimic)
i think ghost, firefly, and stained are excellent candidates for getting this treatment, but having looked at the inverted colourwheel and experimented with some rather crunchy primary/secondary inversions, i'd like to see inverted versions of quite a lot of genes.
i'm most excited about inverted fuchsia. that's the high-saturation green the colour wheel has always lacked! that's what i want! there is no colour like that on the real colourwheel! in fact, there are a lot of colours in the inverted wheel that don't exist anywhere on the official one. yeah, the greyscale range isn't doing anything interesting, but the rest of the wheel is almost entirely new colours.
the following mockups will have slightly messed-up shading. i did my best to correct it.
just LOOK at that neon green!! mint is too blue, mantis isn't saturated enough, and radioactive is very yellow. this is a green that doesn't exist on the colourwheel. inverted fuchsia is where it's at.
inverted peacock also makes a shade of pink we don't have. the closest matches are blush, pink, or rose, but they're all very different.
EDIT: my mistake, that's LEAF, not pear
also quite a few shades of purple we don't properly have. i thought that jaguar would be really close to violet or purple, but it's actually miles off.
inverting the brownrange gives us a lot of desaturated blues and purples
abyss has nothing on inverted peridot. if that flaunt is possible with a real colour, someone please tell me.
i'm showing fully-inverted dragons here, simply to increase density of comparisons, but my intent is very much to be able to invert by slot, and have it be normally inheritable with the "inverted ghost", "inverted flaunt" gene etc, NOT have some kind of "scroll of colour inversion". i am suggesting genes that use an inverted colour palette.
having this function as a completely normal gene also opens up some very interesting possibilities for breeding pairs. imagine a pair that are both fuchsia, but one has ghost and the other has inverted ghost. their offspring can either be vibrant pink or lime green.
and finally, while i am showing edits of existing genes, and i would absolutely love to have inverted versions of existing genes...since staff seem so unwilling to give us gene variants, i'd also be happy with new genes that specifically invert the colours like this. emphasis on "like this". cntrl+i inversion.
GENE BLOAT
rather than have marva sell hundreds of gene scrolls, they'd just sell three:
invert gene: primary
invert gene: secondary
invert gene: tertiary
using one of these would bring up the standard gene scroll confirmation modal, with a note explaining exactly what will happen:
that's crimson, for anyone wondering.
i would imagine the description for the scrolls would be something like
"Changes the selected dragon's tertiary gene to its inverted variant, which uses an alternative colour palette. To undo this, use another Invert Gene: Tertiary. Inverted genes can be passed on normally through breeding."
an alternative approach, as others have brought up, is to introduce a new "inverted" flag that applies to the colour itself:
in my opinion, this flag should be inheritable, with a 50/50 chance if only one parent has it, and guaranteed if both do.
obviously i think that's stupid, my brain must have been channelling the gravel prank there.
so i'm putting it back at the bottom, with added mockups. those concerned about gene bloat should read the BOTTOM of this post, because i hate gene bloat too and wouldn't have suggested this if i didn't have a solution for that.
this suggestion is brought to you by a dream i had.
tl;dr: genes that are copies of existing genes, but with an inverted colour palette. and i mean cntrl+i inverted, invert(100%) inverted.
these genes would invert the colours in the sense that the colour palette for these genes would simply be inverted.
in much the same way that pharaoh/sarcophagous makes all primary/secondary genes black regardless of their colourwheel colour, and the new chrysocolla/malachite genes have their own colour palette that ignores the colourhweel entirely.
seriously, this is hunter, not eggplant.
so these would, mechanically, be ordinary genes just like any other.
they'd simply have very different colours than the colourwheel name would make you expect:
(inverted mockups missing the gradient because that would be a pain to mimic)
i think ghost, firefly, and stained are excellent candidates for getting this treatment, but having looked at the inverted colourwheel and experimented with some rather crunchy primary/secondary inversions, i'd like to see inverted versions of quite a lot of genes.
i'm most excited about inverted fuchsia. that's the high-saturation green the colour wheel has always lacked! that's what i want! there is no colour like that on the real colourwheel! in fact, there are a lot of colours in the inverted wheel that don't exist anywhere on the official one. yeah, the greyscale range isn't doing anything interesting, but the rest of the wheel is almost entirely new colours.
the following mockups will have slightly messed-up shading. i did my best to correct it.
just LOOK at that neon green!! mint is too blue, mantis isn't saturated enough, and radioactive is very yellow. this is a green that doesn't exist on the colourwheel. inverted fuchsia is where it's at.
inverted peacock also makes a shade of pink we don't have. the closest matches are blush, pink, or rose, but they're all very different.
EDIT: my mistake, that's LEAF, not pear
also quite a few shades of purple we don't properly have. i thought that jaguar would be really close to violet or purple, but it's actually miles off.
inverting the brownrange gives us a lot of desaturated blues and purples
abyss has nothing on inverted peridot. if that flaunt is possible with a real colour, someone please tell me.
i'm showing fully-inverted dragons here, simply to increase density of comparisons, but my intent is very much to be able to invert by slot, and have it be normally inheritable with the "inverted ghost", "inverted flaunt" gene etc, NOT have some kind of "scroll of colour inversion". i am suggesting genes that use an inverted colour palette.
having this function as a completely normal gene also opens up some very interesting possibilities for breeding pairs. imagine a pair that are both fuchsia, but one has ghost and the other has inverted ghost. their offspring can either be vibrant pink or lime green.
and finally, while i am showing edits of existing genes, and i would absolutely love to have inverted versions of existing genes...since staff seem so unwilling to give us gene variants, i'd also be happy with new genes that specifically invert the colours like this. emphasis on "like this". cntrl+i inversion.
GENE BLOAT
rather than have marva sell hundreds of gene scrolls, they'd just sell three:
invert gene: primary invert gene: secondary invert gene: tertiaryusing one of these would bring up the standard gene scroll confirmation modal, with a note explaining exactly what will happen:
that's crimson, for anyone wondering.
i would imagine the description for the scrolls would be something like
"Changes the selected dragon's tertiary gene to its inverted variant, which uses an alternative colour palette. To undo this, use another Invert Gene: Tertiary. Inverted genes can be passed on normally through breeding."
an alternative approach, as others have brought up, is to introduce a new "inverted" flag that applies to the colour itself:
Hawkfeather wrote on 2024-02-03 12:05:20:
I wonder if it would make more sense mechanically to invert the actual color rather the gene though? Then you could show it in the scrying ws with a simple toggle and make it clearer which colors are which.
Made a few mockups (icons would obviously be their own thing if this were real, I just mashed some existing ones together as placeholders)
Made a few mockups (icons would obviously be their own thing if this were real, I just mashed some existing ones together as placeholders)
in my opinion, this flag should be inheritable, with a 50/50 chance if only one parent has it, and guaranteed if both do.
i also might as well share that in my dream, gene bloat WAS the marva prank. not just for having one inverted gene scroll per gene, but one per colour per gene. if your dragon had teal stained, and you wanted to invert it, you had to find and purchase "invert tertiary: teal stained".
obviously i think that's stupid, my brain must have been channelling the gravel prank there.
Light Flight
