This comes as a direct result of my stupid post in the bug forums, but maybe it has some value...

It would be nice if we could search for animals based on their dominant color or pattern. As it is now, you can only seach by color or pattern if the color or pattern genes have been researched, but even if they haven't been, it's not hard for us to deduce at least one of the genes in each category based on the physical appearance of the creature.

In short, if I want to search for silver dragons, I might not care if the silver gene has been researched - I just want dragons that appear silver. 

Although this may not be good. This could lead to Multi-Accounting.  Putting up your pet, then going to your other account searching it by genes. THen just talking it out and keeping the list of genes.  

On the other hand, you can tell what type it is.  Like if I want a green dragon, it isnt hard to tell that a dragon is green.  Maybe only seeing that might help.  I mean I can look thru all the dragons and tell which one is green.

I don't really see how it would lead to multiaccounting?

The dominant color and pattern gene is already expressed so having an option to search for all Okapi unicorns rather than all Bay colored and Striped unicorns would simplify things, similar to how you can search by GP and DG. These genes are already expressed, not hard to deduce, and makes life just a little bit easier.

I totally understand. I often do this when buying pets. My suggestion is to list 100 or 50 pets per page as opposed to the normal 10. I then scroll through them fairly quickly with the wheel of my mouse or the scrolly button

I understand though. In order to search a pets genes they need to be researched. But as Liandralithe says, the genes are already expressed, so those are known. 

I agree that while a search would be great, it would be super narrow- which may be great in certian situations. I tend to use the above method because I am rarely decisive on what I want... 

I'm not sure I understand how it would lead to multi-accounting, but as for using it to detect genes, it is worth noting that some colors can be ambiguous. In the example I gave above, a search for silver dragons would give me both those with the silver genes and black dragons with the diluted pattern. Both are listed as having the silver coloring.

I also fail to see how this would result in multi-acounting.

Anyway, I like this idea, particularly if you could also search for specific custom skins, not just custom skins in general.

I'd like to add that I think daisy2944 was confused as to what the suggestion was when she commented on the multi-accounting possibility.

I think she misread the suggestion as being able to put your pets up and other users being able search for specific genes, and the pet showing up whether it was researched or not. In that case multi-accounting could be used. The first account would put up an unresearched pet and the second account could search for the genes and by process of elimination the genes would be determined.

I suppose that you're talking about a dropdown with the list of colors like some other pet games have. The problem is that other games don't have genetics behing their colors. Probably we can group it by color name but then " white" will list a dozen of different colors for different species. I'm not sure if this is what you want, but otherwise it wouldn't be possible at all.

There's a lot of holes which can't be covered by "one color genetics - one color in dropdown". I. e. what about different colors with the same name? A lot of species have a few whites and blacks, and some other colors duplicated as well. Such colors have different genetics, different database entries and different everything except name and appearance. How would someone know which "white" exactly they just chosen among the same 3 "whites" for Rocs for example? Also we can't uncover the real genetics behind the same "whites" in case if they aren't researched yet. If the search isn't filtered by species, then there will be a dozen of such "whites". Also all three deviant variants of the same color have the same name, like " Yellow *", so this may cause a lot of confusion as well. At the same time we can't write the genetics (for example, listing a color as "white A1 B1" or "white A1 B1 P01") to show the difference because this will uncover the color genetics for the pets that aren't researched yet.

So would sorting just by name work?

Sorting by the color listed in the pet profiles is actually what I thought the OP meant.

I wasn't sure because it was worded as "search based on dominant color and pattern" which is a different thing. Search by color name is doable :)