Magical gene / spots and rings

Concentric Eyespots

Butterfly-wing eyespots - nested rings around a pale glinting core - scatter down the neck and all four legs. A third allele carries the same marking worked in greys instead of white - dark where the pale form is light, and the same number of steps.

What it can come out as

OutcomeCarrying
Concentric Eyespots, paleCew/Cew · Cew/Cec · Cew/n · Cew/Cek
Concentric Eyespots, blackCek/Cek · Cek/Cec · Cek/n
Concentric Eyespots, colouredCec/Cec
Wild typeCec/n · n/n

How each one is actually drawn - region by region, and the layers it is built from - is on the coding tab.

Crossing two of them

Finding one

About 1 in 1,786 wild horses is born showing this. That is the whole of the supply: catch one, or make one with the carrot below. Breeds set their own pools and a breed built around this gene will carry it far more often than the wild population does.

Wild pairShows asHow often
Cew/CewConcentric Eyespots, pale0.002% — 1 in 50,000
Cew/CekConcentric Eyespots, pale0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
Cew/CecConcentric Eyespots, pale0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
Cew/nConcentric Eyespots, pale0.038% — 1 in 2,632
Cek/CekConcentric Eyespots, black0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
Cek/CecConcentric Eyespots, black0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
Cek/nConcentric Eyespots, black0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
Cec/CecConcentric Eyespots, coloured0.0027% — 1 in 37,495
n/nWild type99.944%

Its gene carrot

The file

common/src/main/resources/horsegenetics/genes/concentric_eyespots.json — a data-driven gene, not a Java class. It is listed in the index.json beside it and registered by Genes' class initialiser at startup.

Keyhorsegenetics.concentric_eyespots
Phasemagical — it adds signed colour in phase 3, after the pigment has resolved
Priority321 — where it sits in the one (priority, key) paint order
AllelesCew · Cek · Cec · n
Varies per horse7 values drawn once off the expressing allele copy, so a foal that inherits the copy inherits the look
Built fromPARTS, SPOTS, TOWARD

Why it is built this way

Every band is a pair of SPOTS masks on ONE seed, spacing, stretch and vary, differing only in radius, with the smaller one subtracted out. That is what keeps the rings concentric AND in proportion: 'vary' scales every band of a given eyespot by the same per-cell factor, so a big one is a big one all the way through rather than a big rim round an average core.

The legs get three bands and the neck four. A leg is about four body units across and a texel is half a unit; a fourth band there would be under a texel wide and read as mush, so the leg version is deliberately simpler rather than every band being shrunk.

The rim and the core are fixed colours on both forms. They are the eyespot's structural dark edge and its glint, and they read as those whatever accent the horse carries - only the middle bands take the hue knob.

The band radii are wider than the import's by roughly double, and that is not taste. A texel is half a body unit; the original leg rings were 0.28 and 0.26 units from one edge to the next, so every band on every leg was under a texel wide and resolved to nothing at all. The import's own note said a FOURTH band would do that - it was already happening at three. Anything with structure inside it needs several units, and the spacing went up with the radii so the eyespots still do not touch.

The black allele is the white one with the light taken out of it, and it sits one rung under white in the dominance series - so every combination that existed before it keeps the outcome it had, and only the pairs carrying Cek are new. The re-toning is a mapping rather than a repaint: every achromatic target moves into the dark end of the scale keeping its order and its spacing, and every SATURATED one is left alone, because that colour is the gene rather than its lightness.

The white form was regraded at the same time. It spanned a much narrower range of lightness than the coloured form did - the same layers the coloured form separates were all landing on off-white - so its tones now follow the coloured form's own per-layer ordering, in greys. All three forms carry the same number of steps.

What it paints

Each outcome, described the way the gene file describes it, and then the layers that draw it in the order they are painted. The prose is the part a reader checks a bake against; the list underneath is what the engine actually did.

Concentric Eyespots, pale

A faint ivory echo of the rings ghosts along the neck and legs - the same shape as the coloured form, with the colour taken out.

  1. the leg eyespots, band at 1.9 — PARTS × SPOTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  2. the leg eyespots, band at 1.25 — PARTS × SPOTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  3. the leg eyespots, band at 0.62 — PARTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  4. the neck eyespots, band at 3.0 — PARTS × SPOTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  5. the neck eyespots, band at 2.2 — PARTS × SPOTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  6. the neck eyespots, band at 1.5 — PARTS × SPOTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  7. the neck eyespots, band at 0.8 — PARTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD

Concentric Eyespots, black

The same marking as the white form with the light taken out of it: the same 5 steps, moved to the dark end of the scale.

  1. the leg eyespots, band at 1.9 — PARTS × SPOTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  2. the leg eyespots, band at 1.25 — PARTS × SPOTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  3. the leg eyespots, band at 0.62 — PARTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  4. the neck eyespots, band at 3.0 — PARTS × SPOTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  5. the neck eyespots, band at 2.2 — PARTS × SPOTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  6. the neck eyespots, band at 1.5 — PARTS × SPOTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  7. the neck eyespots, band at 0.8 — PARTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD

Concentric Eyespots, coloured

Vivid eyespots - a near-black rim, a warm coloured band, and a pale glinting core - down the neck and every leg.

  1. the leg eyespots, band at 1.9 — PARTS × SPOTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  2. the leg eyespots, band at 1.25 — PARTS × SPOTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  3. the leg eyespots, band at 0.62 — PARTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  4. the neck eyespots, band at 3.0 — PARTS × SPOTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  5. the neck eyespots, band at 2.2 — PARTS × SPOTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  6. the neck eyespots, band at 1.5 — PARTS × SPOTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD
  7. the neck eyespots, band at 0.8 — PARTS × SPOTS, painted with TOWARD

Wild type

Nothing.

Paints nothing.