Magical gene / spots and rings
Picasso Marking
Flat dots in one colour and wandering squiggles in another, with the squiggles keeping clear of the dots - a horse marked like a painting rather than like a horse.
What it can come out as
| Outcome | Carrying |
|---|---|
| Picasso Marking | Pic/Pic |
| Wild type | Pic/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 2,500 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 pair | Shows as | How often |
|---|---|---|
Pic/Pic | Picasso Marking | 0.04% — 1 in 2,500 |
n/n | Wild type | 99.96% |
Its gene carrot
The file
common/src/main/resources/horsegenetics/genes/picasso_marking.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.
| Key | horsegenetics.picasso_marking |
|---|---|
| Phase | magical — it adds signed colour in phase 3, after the pigment has resolved |
| Priority | 316 — where it sits in the one (priority, key) paint order |
| Alleles | Pic · n |
| Varies per horse | 6 values drawn once off the expressing allele copy, so a foal that inherits the copy inherits the look |
| Built from | FLAT, SPOTS, STROKES |
Why it is built this way
Imported from the magic-gene intake, 2026-09-08. The squiggles have a LARGER copy of the dot field subtracted out of them, not the same one - the clearance is what keeps the two marks reading as two marks. Without it the lines cross the dots and the whole thing reads as noise.
Two independent hue knobs, so the dots and the lines are different colours on the same horse and the pair is inherited together.
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.
Picasso Marking
Two colours the horse draws for itself, and they are drawn separately: the dots first, then the squiggles with a slightly larger copy of the dot field subtracted out of them. That clearance is the whole trick - without it the lines run over the dots and the pattern reads as noise. The dot field is mirrored, so the two sides of the horse match.
- flat dots scattered over the barrel —
SPOTS, painted withFLAT - squiggles wandering between them —
STROKES×SPOTS inverted, painted withFLAT
Wild type
No marking.
Paints nothing.