In the latest public patreon post, Paralives developer Anna takes us through how the Paralives genetics system is going to work, revealing how traits and appearance are shared across different generations.
The team are putting effort into making inherited traits feel believable, and give each Para a sense of individuality.
Let’s take a deep dive into this latest information.
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Understanding Paralives Genetics
Inheriting physical features
The Patreon post covered how a few different physical features are going to be compatible with Paralives genetics, let’s unpick them.
In this image from the latest trailer you can see a family resemblance between the Parafolk, children of different heights, and different hair and skin tones.
Facial features
The team are placing a large emphasis on being able to easily recognise which traits have been inherited from which parents, so for example a child might get their mom’s nose and their dad’s jawline. This keeps faces coherent and avoids awkward slider combinations, while making family resemblances easy to spot.
For each facial feature (like the nose, chin, etc.), the child inherits all the relevant sliders from one parent, chosen randomly. For example, they might inherit their entire set of nose sliders from their mom, and the cheeks from their dad. This helps keep things coherent and avoids weird mixes of incompatible sliders, which can quickly lead to ugly or extreme results.
Anna, Paralives developer
Height
With height the aim is to mix inheritance with random chance. Paras will fall into short, medium, or tall categories, and a child randomly inherits one parent’s category, then gets a randomised height within that range. This means siblings can end up very different in stature and could even end up taller than both parents.
Having this possibility of different heights adds a lot of uniqueness to characters and makes the world feel more diverse and alive. Our goal for the genetics part of height is not only to get this idea of height being inherited, but also to add some variation to it so that children of the same parents don’t necessarily have the same height. We want the player to say things like “This family has giant genes running in it!” or “This child grew to be taller than both their parents!”. Waiting for kids to grow before knowing which one is going to be the tallest of the family is a nice little detail that this system makes possible!
Anna, Paralives developer
Most of us are used to seeing characters in life simulation games be one standard height, so even the prospect of having short medium and tall Parafolk is a welcome change. You can see from this image how much height can vary between children.
Eye, hair and skin colour
Using a simplified version of dominant and recessive genes, Paralives genetics features like hair eye and skin colour will vary lots more between family members.
These can skip generations, allowing for surprises like a grandparent’s eye colour reappearing later on in the family line.
Hair textures will range from straight to coily, with curlier textures being more dominant.
There’s one gene for hair texture, and it can have four possible alleles: straight, wavy, curly, or coily; with coily being the most dominant, and straight the most recessive. In other words, the more curls you have, the more likely the trait is to “win” when mixed.
Let’s say a Para gets one curly allele from their mom and one wavy allele from their dad. Since curly is more dominant than wavy, the Para will have one of our curly hairstyles, chosen at random. But the wavy gene is still there, and it could show up again in their child, if paired with another recessive allele!
Anna, Paralives developer
How the Paralives genetics system is being implemented
The genetics system is applied in multiple ways. You can create Paras from scratch, generate children from parents during gameplay, and even add relatives like parents or siblings in the Paramaker.
Looking at the genetics window in Paramaker, you can see that there are two options available at the moment – create child and create twin. The team assured us in the post that more customisable options will be added as game development continues, like create parent and create sibling.
They also clarified that even though babies and toddlers may look a bit generic at first, their genetic data is saved and fully revealed as they grow.
Another thing that is not yet added but might come in the future is customisable genetics using an advanced genetics interface for anyone who wants to control their Para’s genetics themselves.
Same sex parents and genetic compatibility was also addressed by the team.
In the Paramaker, you can make a genetic child from two same-sex parents, but during gameplay, the parental couple will always consist of one para that can get pregnant and one para that can get others pregnant (you can edit these per character in the Paramaker).
Anna, Paralives developer
Modding genetics
Most the life simulation community loves adding mods to their game, and from the start the team at Paralives has promised that mod capability will be taken into consideration.
Players will be able to tweak or add inheritable traits, create alien species, make “unnatural” colours genetic, or add inheritable accessories like horns or fantasy ears.
As with most of our in-game systems, genetics are widely moddable. You can add, remove, or modify any trait category that supports genetic inheritance, set up the sliders you want inherited (or not), and more.
Anna, Paralives developer
These updates give us a glance into the way the team are making the Paralives genetics system intuitive for Parafolk and players, and shows they are thinking about all the different ways Paras can be unique individuals even within the same genepool.
While there’s still work to be done, the genetics system already promises deeper family storytelling and plenty of “they look just like their parent” moments.
What do you think about the Paralives genetics system? What would you want to see added? let us know below.
I would love if there were a genetic trait or something for multiples, like a ‘twins runs in the family’ kind of thing. also, it feels weird to ask…but at what family level is romance possible? I don’t know if its been said anywhere but I cant find this info.
I feel like I have to ask to clarify, do you mean familial romance? I kind of hope that won’t be possible at all in game, unless you’re trying to recreate the English monarchy in 1500 or whenever that one family existed.
My guess would be they’re curious how far out things would have to get before it’s allowed – whether it’s like second cousins (kinda weird), third cousins and beyond (which isn’t weird biologically), or simply “never.”