Delos

Genomes: looks carried as dominant and recessive alleles, personality traits blended from both parents, talents (how fast each skill is learned) and instincts (inborn tastes for actions), with the odd mutation. Named for Westworld’s Delos, the company that kept a copy of everyone who came to the parks and made new people from the copies.

The ideas come from Merryfolk’s genetics (and Creatures’ genome before it): children who look like one parent or the other, sometimes like a grandparent, and whose nature blends both with a little of their own.

• Genes
• Blended values: traits, talents, instincts, looks
• Founders
• Births
• Mutations
• State
• API
• Terms, events and log
• Config
• With other modules
• Example

Genes

A gene has alleles, listed most dominant first. With two copies (the default), a child takes one copy from each parent, picked at random from the two that parent carries; what shows is the most dominant allele carried, so two brown-eyed parents who each carry blue can have a blue-eyed child. With copies: 1, the child takes one parent’s copy whole (a hair color, a sex). express replaces dominance with any rule (codominance, a count).

world.delos.gene({ id: 'eyes', alleles: ['brown', 'hazel', 'green', 'blue'], weights: [5, 2, 1.5, 2.5], mutate: 0.04 });
world.delos.gene({ id: 'freckles', alleles: ['plain', 'freckled'], weights: [3, 1] });    // recessive: freckled only with two copies
world.delos.gene({ id: 'chrome', alleles: ['chrome', 'plain'], weights: [1, 9] });        // dominant: one copy shows
world.delos.gene({ id: 'hair', alleles: ['auburn', 'black', 'flaxen', 'chestnut'], copies: 1, mutate: 0.06 });
world.delos.express('ana', 'eyes');      // 'brown'
world.delos.carries('ana', 'eyes', 'blue');

Looks are the game’s to draw: delos.looks(id) gives every gene as it shows, and the continuous looks.

Blended values: traits, talents, instincts, looks

Four kinds of value are blended from both parents, each declared with a BlendDef:

A child’s value is one parent's × cross + the parents' average × (1 - cross), plus a draw within ±noise, kept within bounds (and whole with round). The parent is picked at random for each value, so a child can take after either. express turns the genome’s value into what the person gets: Merryfolk’s aptitudes run 0 to 1 and mean learning at 0.4 + aptitude × 1.2 times the rate:

world.delos.trait({ id: 'merriness', founders: [0.1, 0.95], bounds: [0.03, 1] });
world.delos.talent({ id: 'baking', founders: [0.15, 1], bounds: [0.05, 1], cross: 0.7, noise: 0.08, express: (a) => 0.4 + a * 1.2 });
world.delos.instinct({ id: 'fish', founders: [0.8, 1.25], bounds: [0.6, 1.4] });
world.delos.look({ id: 'skin', founders: [0, 5], bounds: [0, 5], cross: 0, noise: 0.7, round: true });

Founders

Someone who joins without a genome (everyone at the start, travelers later) gets a founder’s: each gene’s copies drawn by weights, each value drawn from founders, from a stream of the world’s seed and their id (so the same seed makes the same people). A trait, talent or instinct their definition already gives is kept as the genome’s value, and left as it is; the rest are expressed into their definition. Declare Delos’s definitions before adding people. delos.set(id, part) (an input) sets any part of someone’s genome (an imported traveler’s, a game’s own founders’) and writes what the values mean into their definition.

Births

When anything is declared, Delos takes over Cradle’s inheritance: a child born through cradle.birth (or Cradle’s own daily births) gets a genome from its parents’ (parents without one get a founder’s first), and its definition gets the traits, talents and instincts it carries. Traits the parents have that Delos doesn’t carry are still blended Cradle’s way. With nothing declared, Cradle blends traits as it always has, and Delos keeps no state. A birth without parents gets a founder’s genome.

Mutations

Rare changes, kept in the genome’s mut list and logged and emitted as mutated:

• a gene with mutate: with that chance per child (times the headline knob mutation), one copy turns into another allele, drawn by weights;
• a trait jump: with config.jump.chance (0.12) per child (times mutation), one trait moves by jump.by (0.35), up or down;
• a gift: with config.gift.chance (0.1) per child (times mutation), one talent rises by gift.by (0.4).

State

In world.s.mod.delos, made with the first genome:

What a genome means for the person is in their definition (traits, talents, instincts), saved with them.

API

world.delos. Input methods are recorded and safe from the game.

GeneDef

BlendDef

Terms, events and log

Terms: gene:<id> (what the gene shows), carries:<gene>.<allele>.

Log entries: mutated.

Config

Tyrell.create({ moduleConfig: { delos: { ... } } }):

Delos’s knobs are the world’s only (a child’s genome is made before they’re anyone). See Tuning; during play, world.tune('delos', { ... }).

With other modules

• Cradle: births inherit a genome when anything is declared (above).
• Skills (the core) read talents; Bicameral weighs instincts.
• Fellowship: nothing direct; compatibility reads values, which Delos doesn’t carry (a game can keep values in its definitions as it likes).

Example

const d = world.delos;
d.gene({ id: 'eyes', alleles: ['brown', 'blue'], weights: [3, 2] });
for (const t of ['merriness', 'sociability', 'bravery']) d.trait({ id: t });
d.talent({ id: 'baking' });
d.instinct({ id: 'fish' });

world.person('rose', { home: 'hole_1' });     // a founder's genome, drawn from the seed
world.person('sam', { home: 'hole_1' });
const baby = world.cradle.birth(['rose', 'sam']);
world.delos.looks(baby);                       // { eyes: 'blue' }
world.get(baby).def.traits.merriness;          // between Rose's and Sam's, with a little of its own
world.on('mutated', (e) => chronicle(`${world.get(e.id)?.name ?? 'The baby'} was born with ${e.kind === 'talent' ? 'a gift for ' + e.what : 'unusual ' + e.what}.`));