Toady has commented on it, and he wants to do it eventually. However, it's a hard technical problem if tackled at a satisfactory depth, i.e. a system capable of producing e.g. centaurs and pegasii.
From a philosophical point of view, there are two rather distinct cross breed processes:
1. The natural one, i.e. creatures of two sufficiently closely related species generating viable offspring (with the old fashioned definition of race/species boundary being whether the offspring being fertile, while the current politically correct one is that everything that might eventually become separate species are declared to be ones immediately, sometimes with a rather generous take one "might", resulting in a bazillion sub species being declared distinct). This inherently limits the parents to very similar body plans (but still with a need for a process to generate the results). This process probably would need raw cues, i.e. in the form of tags that link a species to a "base" one, indicating whether it's a race or derived species, and possibly an indication of whether a particular or all "sibling" species/races are degraded one step on the rung (to e.g. allow human-goblin, human-dwarf, human-elf cross breeds, but not goblin-elf (if a prohibition tag), or any combination of derived species (if all). Then you'd also have to determine where cross breeds inherit their compatibility from (mother, father, limits dominating, permissions dominating).
[Also note that the above is a simplification, ignoring the fact that there aren't "base" species in reality, but rather common ancestors: chimps have evolved for as long as humans have from their last common ancestor, for instance].
2. The magic one, where aspects of creatures are merged, or grafted onto a base species. I would argue that neither centaurs nor cerberii could result from any natural process, and probably wouldn't be created by breeding in any conventional sense. If we look at real world mythology, it's a common theme with humans having heads of various animals, for instance. I have a hard time seeing this work without recipe guidelines, but have no idea of how to approach the issue.
3. Creating a new species from an old one, a magic approach not involving breeding. There's a Threetoe story about the creation of the Foul Blendec using this path.
Author
Topic: Half-Breeds (Read 2626 times)