Animal Genes
Recent breakthroughs in gene technologies have revealed that the genes of animals are compatible with baseliners! Make your colonists as resistant to cold as a Muffalo, as large as a rat, with a Warg's razorfangs and let them eat trees like a Thrumbo.
And if a pawn has the right genetic affinity and all the genes relevant to an animal, they might end up as the real thing!
Key Features
Animal's abilities (i.e. everything from size, armor, speed, temperature tolerance, hair/skin color, leather/wool/milk production, ...) is represented by genes that can be extracted and applied to your colonists.
If a pawn has the right affinity gene (i.e. "Thrumbo Affinity") and all genes related to it, it turns into the sapient animal version and has the metabolic cost of all those cool genes completely compensated for!
Procedural generation of genes
Rather than manually adding and assigning genes, the mod automatically generated genes based on animal properties. A modded chocolate muffalo that produces chocolate milk and cotton candy wool? Should just work out of the box! Note that complicated modded animals with special behaviors or scripted visuals may still need a patch.
Genetic behaviors
Sapient deer graze, sapient thrumbos eat trees, sapient panthers hunt small game. Extract the dendrovore gene and your colonists too can survive off wood and cacti. This behavior should be reasonably performance-light, due to using existing rimworld systems and only triggering if no normal food is found (or allowed!). Forbid all meals, allow trees and have your thrumbo survive off the local forests.
These behaviors can be disabled in the mod options.
How to play
Assign an animal to a gene extractor.
Alternatively, acquire the genes from laboratories and traders.
Affinity genes are inactive until all relevant genes are present on a pawn. Once they are, the gene and all relevant genes (xeno and otherwise) are turned into endogenes and the pawn turns into a sapient animal. A triggered affinity gene will remove all other affinity genes present during this change. This change is irreversible!
Be wary of overriding the endogenes of sapient animals! Once thrown out of balance, the affinity gene no longer compensates for the metabolic cost of all relevant genes. If you want a rat-sized sapient thrumbo (or thrumbo-sized rat), you can, but you'll have to deal with their suddenly hungry, hungry metabolisms.
Github
[url=https://steamcommunity.com/linkfilter/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fsmw3%2Fanimal-genes]https://github.com/smw3/animal-genes[/url]
Patching
All procedurally generated genes first check if an appropriate gene already exists. For example, all genes that handle natural armor look for "ANG_<defName>_Armor", and if they can't find that, generate one.
If you want to have more fine control over genes applied to modded animals, make existing genes with the same defNames of the genes you see in-game.
Potential Issues
My sapient chickens don't lay eggs!
- Egg laying behaviors are not yet implemented. Since it goes beyond simply producing a resource, and has to do with reproduction, there are questions to be answered still. Expect it to be part of future updates.
You said it'd automatically work with mods!
- Load order matters: Make sure this mod (And B&S Framework too, probably) is loaded AFTER any mods that add animals. I have only thoroughly tested vanilla compatibility so far.
How do I cheat via devmode?
- While in dev mode, in a pawn's "genes" tab, there is a button for Animal Genes
