Color label grey/white mismatched for sheep

[Albrun 10]

tl;dr: some white-looking sheep are labeled as color:grey in the inspect-animal window.

 

So far ingame I have encountered 'white' and 'black' sheep, labeled as such and having a matching texture. By chance I noticed a white-looking sheep labeled as color:grey in the inspect-animal window. After a cursory search I found at least a dozen sheep in my village that are labeled as 'grey' in the inspect window, but appear with the regular white-sheep texture. I confirmed with other players, and they too saw the sheep as looking white and labeled 'grey'. The greys were among bred sheep, wild sheep, and even a mission-spawned sheep.

Current help chat had not heard of the issue and GM Vayu referred me here. Presumably, either the label in the inspect window is broken and should read 'white', or the greys are legit but missing a texture. Or is the color:grey supposed to be a hint for recessive genes, but that seems weird and seemingly used nowhere else in that manner.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Albrun

[Seriphina 1,223]

I forget where I'd read it, probably in a valrei or maintenance update, but white and black are actually the recessive. The average sheep is "grey" with the other two being the less common trait. Though you're right, there isn't a different model. Evidently this has always been the color make-up of the sheep herds we just didn't know until the animal husbandry update added the inspect window.

 

That being said, if you're trying to breed a certain sheep color, there seems greater success of getting the desired outcome if you breed a black with a white or black with black (assuming you're trying to get black) than black with grey in my experience.

[Archaed 2,280]

Grey means it has no specific texture. It's a fallback to most animals having the same details. 

 

For horses it rolls through a range of colours and if it doesn't land on any of them it goes to grey. 

[Albrun 10]

So it's not actually an issue and it was wrong for me to be sent here with it? That's embarrassing, sorry for the trouble.

 

For the explanations, that seems confusing, I'm not sure I get it. So sheep have three color values ('labels') available, and the 'grey' one does not have a texture of its own, so you phenotypically get two white one black instead; and that's on purpose. That so far seems agreed on. (Guess then the wiki should say that there's no actual grey phenotype.) But the color value being an actual dominant-recessive inheritance as Seriphina's reply implies or chancepicked like Archaed's does seem mutually exclusive.

Also in Seriphina's dom-rec case, I was then first assuming a white-dominant two-allele inheritance (WW / Ww / ww), with the three color values representing the genotypes. But then you said 'white' and 'black' sheep were both recessive, which would need three alleles resulting in more genotypes than the three color values could document, making the color labels rather pointless as indicators. And going by the reported inheritance in your last line, you mean to say the black allele is stronger than the white one, so G>b>w? Tbh the whole dom-rec inheritance here to me seems untypical of wurm, even less with a three-allele inheritance of stepped dominance where the top and bottom one make the same phenotype; seems unnecessarily complicated, but maybe it's wogic. I've been brooding on this way too long already so I'm posting now, forgive my lack of understanding.

 

 

ETA: On re-re-reading again after posting I got another idea (typical). I may have been monumentally stupid. Do you not actually mean "recessive" when you said it but are misusing that as synonym for "less common trait"? In that case my entire paragraph trying to decode the dom-rec inheritance system from your post can go into the bin.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Albrun

[Seriphina 1,223]

1 hour ago, Albrun said:

So it's not actually an issue and it was wrong for me to be sent here with it? That's embarrassing, sorry for the trouble.

 

For the explanations, that seems confusing, I'm not sure I get it. So sheep have three color values ('labels') available, and the 'grey' one does not have a texture of its own, so you phenotypically get two white one black instead; and that's on purpose. That so far seems agreed on. (Guess then the wiki should say that there's no actual grey phenotype.) But the color value being an actual dominant-recessive inheritance as Seriphina's reply implies or chancepicked like Archaed's does seem mutually exclusive.

Also in Seriphina's dom-rec case, I was then first assuming a white-dominant two-allele inheritance (WW / Ww / ww), with the three color values representing the genotypes. But then you said 'white' and 'black' sheep were both recessive, which would need three alleles resulting in more genotypes than the three color values could document, making the color labels rather pointless as indicators. And going by the reported inheritance in your last line, you mean to say the black allele is stronger than the white one, so G>b>w? Tbh the whole dom-rec inheritance here to me seems untypical of wurm, even less with a three-allele inheritance of stepped dominance where the top and bottom one make the same phenotype; seems unnecessarily complicated, but maybe it's wogic. I've been brooding on this way too long already so I'm posting now, forgive my lack of understanding.

 

 

ETA: On re-re-reading again after posting I got another idea (typical). I may have been monumentally stupid. Do you not actually mean "recessive" when you said it but are misusing that as synonym for "less common trait"? In that case my entire paragraph trying to decode the dom-rec inheritance system from your post can go into the bin.

 

I mean recessive as in a recessive gene as is demonstrated in a Mendel cross variation when dominant and recessive traits are put up against one another and can give varying outcomes such as with a black and grey sheep breeding, the resulting lamb could be GG grey, Gb grey, bG grey, or bb black.  And even when breeding two black sheep, the potential outcome still includes and is heavily weighted toward grey.

I digress. This is a discussion on bugs.

[Albrun 10]

Well if you are arguing it's dom-rec inheritance my points stand. How does that relate to the three color values labeled. How is white recessive here (unless it's referring to a second white-making gene w in a three-allele system G/w/b). And if it used a two-allele system with recessive black two blacks shouldn't be able to make a white kid. The latter would be a bug then so it's still a bug discussion.
Which makes me inclined to believe Archaed, that there is no mendelian genetic inheritance involved here, just like there isn't for other animals.
Anyway, sorry for the topic. All this time I got told to report various things here and now that I went and did it turns out like this. X)

Edited March 8, 2022 by Albrun