DOC Personality Reader

Verified: how post-race replies work (2026-09-30). What a reply does to hearts depends on your horse's personality and on the message the game shows after the race. Each message has its own reply buttons and its own hearts values for each personality, and the value goes with the button's position on screen, counted from the left. After an ordinary loss there is always at least one reply that gains hearts, and the replies there move hearts by between -12 and +20 points (hearts run 0 to 63, one heart per 4 points). A few answers halve the horse's hearts (marked "half" in the table), for example a wrong name at the race 25 question, "No" to "Are you willing to bet the farm?" at race 35, and some replies after a win when the horse has won more than 49% of its races. A few replies never lose hearts wherever they appear: Comfort (+6 or +8) and Wake up (+6) for a Coward, and Sooth (0 to +4) for an Honest horse. If the timer runs out, the highlighted reply is used (the leftmost one if you never moved the cursor). From race 20, when the cabinet is set to a normal race mode (not a Grade 1 mode), the rightmost button is replaced by Retire: pressing it changes no hearts and really retires the horse, so don't press it by accident. After the 63rd race there are no buttons at all: the message says the horse will retire, and it is retired whatever you press (normal race modes only). DOC 2000 and DOC '99 use the same buttons and hearts values, with Retire from race 20 whatever the operator settings, and DOC '99 gives you about 15 seconds to answer instead of about 13.5. The game's own code (Rev C), read twice independently; Rev D's reply tables are identical. Older per-button tables that ignored the message were wrong, including the one this page used to show (see the bottom of the page). See the DOC FAQ (post-race reply, hearts after a reply, personality types).

📂 Load your horse's .card/.raw or pick a personality:

Load a World Edition card to read its personality (card byte 0x3F), or pick one above.

There are five personalities: Imposing, Honest, Rough, Coward and Sloppy. "Too soft" and "Strict" are not personalities: they are the two answers to the race 45 question "How'd you train your horse?" (both +4 hearts points). Personality changes the hearts value of every post-race reply, the move the horse makes in the paddock walk at the start of play, and how likely it is to refuse training. DOC 2000 and DOC '99 decide personality with the same code and table, so the same five types apply there. It is inherited from both parents, bit by bit, so a foal usually lands near a mix of its parents but can differ from both.

How the card is read: the game's personality classifier looks only at the high four bits of card byte 0x3F and maps them through a 16-entry table in the ROM (Rev C file 0x10BEF8: 2,2,2,0,3,1,1,0,3,1,1,0,3,4,4,4) to one of five classes. Byte 0 to 47 = Rough; 48 to 63, 112 to 127 and 176 to 191 = Imposing; 64 to 79, 128 to 143 and 192 to 207 = Coward; 80 to 111 and 144 to 175 = Honest; 208 to 255 = Sloppy. The class-to-name order is proven by the race 25 question: for each class exactly one name is answered "That's right!" (+8 hearts points), and it is always that class's own name.

Reply table: pick the message you saw

Every value is read from the game's reply tables (Rev C; Rev D is identical), in hearts points. Buttons are numbered by their position on screen, from the left. A value like "+8, half if it has won over 49%" changes once the horse has won more than 49% of its races; "sometimes" marks a reply that also depends on a hidden random roll. Where the same message can come up in two situations with different values, both are shown; which one you got depends on the finishing place and, by our reading of the code, on whether the horse's gauge was nearly full at the finish. The food questions at races 10, 15, 23 and 33 are left out of the table because the right answer depends on your horse's own tastes, but each always has one. At races 10 and 23, "What food does (horse) dislike?" always shows exactly one food it refuses, and picking it gains 20 points (a wrong food costs 8 at race 10 and 12 at race 23). At race 15, "Is (food) the food (horse) dislikes?" is Yes only for a food it refuses; at race 33, "Is (food) (horse)'s favorite food?" is Yes for any food it eats. A right answer gains 20 points; a wrong one costs 8 at race 15 and 16 at race 33.

Telling the personality in the game

The surest way is the question at (usually) the horse's 25th race, "What type of thoroughbred is your horse?". The names on offer already give it away, because each personality gets a different set; read the first three names from the left. The right name gains 8 hearts points, and a wrong name halves the horse's hearts. (The race 25 question is replaced by a first-win or first Grade 1 title message if either happens at race 25.)

Names offered (from the left)	Your horse is
Imposing, Honest, Rough	Imposing
Honest, Rough, Coward	Honest
Imposing, Rough, Coward	Rough
Honest, Sloppy, Coward	Coward
Imposing, Sloppy, Rough	Sloppy

The export handbook's "pasture" tells are in the game code too: in the paddock walk at the start of play, while you wait for your first race, holding a button makes the horse do a move that depends only on its personality. Imposing rears, Honest shakes (a shiver), Rough kicks, Coward flinches, Sloppy sits or lies down. The code confirms the five moves, which personality gets which and that they happen in that paddock walk; which button it is comes from the handbook.

When a horse doesn't feel like training

Refusal: each time you choose a training session there is a small chance that the horse refuses. The chance depends on its personality, the course and whether it is a Single or Cooperate run; it goes down by 1 point for every race the horse has won, but never below 1% (a course that starts at 0% stays at 0%). It never happens before the horse's first race, and hearts do not change the chance. A refused session plays a short scene (for example "Ah! Your horse is running away!!" or "Your horse puts its foot down.") and gives no training gain and no hearts change. Starting chances on the four track courses, in percent (Pool and Rest are left out: their chance depends on a hidden value):

Personality	Turf	Slope	Dirt	Wood		Turf	Slope	Dirt	Wood
	Single run					Cooperate run

Idle run: if you finish a Turf, Slope, Dirt or Wood run without pressing the whip or the hold button even once, the game shows a line such as "Your horse doesn't seem willing." or "The horse needs more affections." and the run counts as the worst result, costing 16 hearts points in a Single run or 20 in a Cooperate run. ("Your horse doesn't seem willing." can also be a refusal line, so that line alone doesn't tell you which happened.)

Historical: the old "reply table" was a mood-chance table

Kept as a record of what this page used to show, now correctly labelled. The 30 numbers are real bytes in the ROM (the second of two 6 by 5 tables read by the routine at 0x0C047F68), but they are not reply values: the columns are the five personalities, and the rows are how the horse finished (won, 2nd to 5th, 6th or worse), each split by a flag set at the finish. The routine turns them into a percentage chance that picks which loss message appears (and so which reply menu you get). They never change hearts directly and have nothing to do with buttons. The old page labelled the columns Hug, Praise, Flatter, Comfort and Scold; those labels were guesses and were wrong.