Magical gene / mane and tail

Fade

The mane and tail leave the coat colour behind on their way down and end in a colour no horse's hair is, the shade running in the family.

What it can come out as

OutcomeCarrying
FadeFd/Fd · Fd/n
Wild typen/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 833 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
Fd/FdFade0.006% — 1 in 16,667
Fd/nFade0.114% — 1 in 877
n/nWild type99.88%

Its gene carrot

The file

common/src/main/resources/horsegenetics/genes/fade.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.fade
Phasemagical — it adds signed colour in phase 3, after the pigment has resolved
Priority400 — where it sits in the one (priority, key) paint order
AllelesFd · n
Varies per horse3 values drawn once off the expressing allele copy, so a foal that inherits the copy inherits the look
Built fromAXIS, PARTS, RAMP

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.

Fade

A smooth ombre down the length of the mane, forelock and tail: the roots keep the horse's own hair colour untouched, and somewhere down the strand that gives way to a colour which has nothing to do with the horse. Where the fade is pale the shift is barely a shift at all and you could miss it; where it is deep the far half of the hair is simply that colour and nothing else. Both the shade and how far up it reaches run in the family. It never touches the coat.

  1. the gradient down the hair — PARTS × AXIS, painted with RAMP

Wild type

Ordinary hair.

Paints nothing.