Suntouched

The effects

The behaviour half is an effects block — two of the six effect verbs. common/ parses it; the NeoForge translator and the client renderer run it.

"effects": [
  {
    "type": "glow",
    "light": 12,
    "parts": [ "HAIR" ]
  },
  {
    "type": "emitter", "kind": "particle", "shape": "point", "anchor": "body",
    "trigger": { "interval": 6 },
    "particle": "minecraft:dust", "color": "#ffcf47", "chance": 0.35
  }
]

the cast light (light: 12)

The server keeps a single minecraft:light block at light level 12 trailing the horse — moved only when the horse walks into a new block, dropped on death / unload / dimension change (EntityLeaveLevelEvent). It is only placed into air, and it is skipped in the horse dimension so the read-only horse dimension doesn’t fill with light blocks. A server crash can orphan one block — the same caveat the portal plots carry. There is no when, so a Suntouched horse always glows, foal included.

the emissive mane (parts: ["HAIR"])

Pure client render. GeneticCoatTextureFactory bakes a second texture — the coat colour on the mane and tail texels, transparent everywhere else — and EmissiveCoatLayer redraws the model through it at full brightness, so the gold hair keeps glowing with no light on it. The colour is exactly what the TOWARD layer above painted, so the two never drift. Foal: tail only (no mane part on the foal mesh), matching the coat layer.

the gold-dust aura

A minecraft:dust particle in #ffcf47 centred on the horse’s body, a single point every interval = 6 ticks with a per-fire chance of 0.35. Unlike Waterborn’s on_move hoof trail, this one fires whether the horse is standing or moving — a steady shimmer rather than a track.

Gene key

horsegenetics.suntouched

Alleles

Sntch n

Outcomes

wild, suntouched

Shows when

Sntch/n, Sntch/Sntch

Default allele

n

Wild frequency

1 in 128 per allele → ~1 wild horse in 64 shows it

Founder draws

1 × nextFloat()

Deterministic

yes — no knobs, so every carrier bakes the same gold mane

Epigenetic draws

none

Priority

210 — a data-driven magical gene, slots before Waterborn (215) and before Test in magicalOrder()

Mane colour

#ffcf47 (255, 207, 71), 88% of the way there

Effects

glow light 12 + emissive HAIR, emitter gold-dust aura

The coat: a molten-gold mane and tail

The visual half is one ordinary magical coat layer: a PARTS mask on the HAIR parts (mane + tail) crossed with a TOWARD op that walks each hair texel 88% of the way to #ffcf47.

{
  "name": "molten-gold glow through the mane and tail",
  "masks": [
    { "type": "PARTS", "parts": [ "HAIR" ] }
  ],
  "op": { "type": "TOWARD", "color": "#ffcf47", "strength": 88, "opacity": 100 }
}

TOWARD rather than TINT for the same reason mane colour and Waterborn use it: it reads what each strand currently looks like and steps it toward the target, so the mane keeps its light and dark instead of flattening to a slab, and it reads the same over a black, a chestnut or a cremello. opacity: 100 means the gold also shows on a dominant-white horse.

Suntouched carries no knobs, so a visible carrier is deterministic: every Suntouched horse bakes one shared texture per base coat, and there is nothing on the Sntch copy for a foal to inherit beyond the allele itself. It is the first shipped data-driven gene with no per-horse randomness at all.

Ships as a file, like Waterborn

Suntouched ships inside the mod the same way Waterborn does: the classpath index neoforge-26.1.2/src/main/resources/horsegenetics/genes/index.json now lists suntouched.json and waterborn.json, and GeneSpecLoader.fromClasspath() registers both from the mod constructor. With two shipped genes:

• the in-game genotype code is 13 segments, and shorter saved horses will not load;
• the GenotypeCatalog count is roughly 4× its no-gene size (each shipped DOMINANT two-allele gene doubles it);
• :common:test is unaffected — the index is in the NeoForge module’s resources, not on the common test classpath, so the golden test and the 11-built-in count still hold. The example-genes/suntouched.json copy that the unit tests read is loaded by name, never as a registered gene.

To turn Suntouched off, drop it from index.json and delete the file.

Not modelled yet

• One gold, one strength; no per-horse variation and no allelic series (rose-gold / white-gold / ember).
• The dynamic light is a trailing minecraft:light block, not a proper moving light source — it lags a fast gallop and can’t light a spot already occupied by a block. A mixin-based light would be smoother.
• The glow is on all the time. A when: { flag: "night" } or { flag: "sky_visible" } gate would make it a day/night trait — the light block clears within a tick of when going false.
• The gene creator cannot edit an effects block — this one was hand-written.