Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance

[ghost]

Currently epigenetics is missing from the genetics implementation, and it's tricky to consider how best such a thing would be implemented. Like a lot of other alife programs the current genome is very simple.

Epigenetics would mean being able to switch genes on or off under certain conditions, such as diet, stress level and so on. The switching ability means that the genome would become more like a program than a lookup table.

I suppose that there could be multiple copies of a gene inherited and the epigenetics then switches between them such that only one is expressed at a given time. The selection condition for each gene group could also be heritable.

[connorsb]

Another potential solution, which would influence things in a much more random way, is to have epigenetics be a change not in the genes but in the gene-reading algorithms - some variable that introduces random shifting into XYZ% of the genes it is reading (AATTTCC -> AATGTCC, because that 4th letter failed its random percentage and got shifted)