At some point, you would get the technology to play with genes. Depending on what you're modifying, the gene lab would tax you pixels and certain resources. First, you would be able to do this with trees. Then, you would be able to do this with animals. After that, you would be able to clone creatures, which is much faster and much pricier than breeding. Last, you'd be able to do it with rare animals/trees (such as the rainbow tree). It would be costly and slow to do this, but indeed very rewarding. Every creature and tree would have, basically, a puzzle set made of genetic pieces. A gene pool. What you would have to do is take certain pieces out of a gene pool and then clone or breed to find out what the effects are. When you find out the effects, you would have to write it down (and insert the new creature's genes) into the gene log--an app on the gene and cloning lab for recording information. It keeps all of the genes and images of their hosts in its catalogue. To breed, you'd have to fertilise a creature with the new dna. It may not work, depending on the host. Many of these genes would be necessary to sustain the life of the creature, and result in it dying in birth if lost. They could, though, have interesting effects if given to another creature's gene pool. Something like gills in a fish, that let it breathe underwater, would kill it in birth if they were removed... but given to another creature, it could give it the power to breathe underwater. Some would be utterly useless, such as a bird's wings on a cow--they're too small for the cow to fly! But it does have cute tiny wings, now. Others of these genes have useful effects--such as growth speed, size, colouration, litter size, wood type, etc. If a gene conflicts with another, one of them would be selected as primary based on a hidden stat. To place a new gene into a creature, you have to make space--remove a gene they already have. Some genes would be inactive--basically, free slots. Higher tier creatures would have more of these. Rare trees would have less. Also, there would be a maximum of each gene type--for example, necessities (heart, lungs, etc) would be limited so you can't have a creature with 3 hearts and 6 lungs. If you see the same gene a second time on a random different creature, the gene machine will know and let you know that it's already been identified. For example, many creatures have the same head or attack type. Disclaimer: This is not at all realistic, just what I think is an interesting way to make genetic engineering less boring and easy.
So, essentially, you want to allow players to use the game engine's Creature Generation? (creatures are randomly assigned a head, arms, body, legs, tail, etc when you first go to a planet). If we allow players to start splicing genes, but not allowing them to name their ship Rapture, we could essentially let them access the Creature Generation, except that we aren't randomly generating a new pet, we're combining two of them. I'm hoping it's more like Devil Survivor (pick what parts you want the result to have) and less like Devil Summoner (who knows what you'll end up with! It depends on the time of day, and the types of each creature, and if it's "that time of the month").
so does this eventually go into cloning of humanoids or even creating your own races? also would there be vendors who buy these weird animals and creatures from you?
It's not random--you're taking parts from known creatures, you just don't know which ones until you've seen the results. Basically, you have to decrypt them to use them.
