Mod The Sims - The mysteries of Sim DNA unraveled

RGiles

21st Nov 2004, 06:31 PM

Hahaha! :) Well Quaxi, it depends what you mean by "Property File" I guess. If you change the property sets inside the sim's N00X_User00X.package file, that only changes how your sim looks. It does not change their DNA. They will still only pass on the original values to their offspring. In fact the DNA info is not stored inside the Sim's package, which is why even if you replace the entire package and update the GUID so you've got an entirely new sim, and they will still pass on the old genes.

The sim DNA is stored in the neighborhood file in a group cleverly labeled Sound File Mapping by SimPE (file type 0xEBFEE33F). These files are genetic data and have nothing to do with sounds. (And Sim Unknown files are individual sim's list of WANTS, in case ya'll coders don't know that, but you probably do. You guys are smarter than me.) This is a property set as well, but one that shows dominant and recessive genes.

I don't know if this was generally known information. I could not find anything about it searching on the boards, (if fact still seeing some people here claiming it's not possible to change a sim's skin at all without changing their face too!) and as I said the clone feature of TS2Enhancer does not update this data. So... if anyone needs to know more, let me know, and if this is redundant info, sorry I wasted the bandwidth.

Cheers,
RG

RGiles

21st Nov 2004, 06:57 PM

Oh and if you guys knew this, why didn't you spill the beans here? !amazed I have been going nuts looking for this data.

RG

Makkentass

21st Nov 2004, 07:41 PM

I was wondering why the "Sound File Mapping" had a reference to "nose,brow,cheek,ears"

So... How does one update this data? And is the Pol. Tech's DNA stored there? He needs a color change...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<cGZPropertySetString>
<AnyString key="1" type="0x0b8bea18">00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</AnyString>
<AnyString key="2" type="0x0b8bea18">00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</AnyString>
<AnyString key="268435457" type="0x0b8bea18">00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</AnyString>
<AnyString key="268435458" type="0x0b8bea18">00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</AnyString>
<AnyString key="268435459" type="0x0b8bea18">32dee745-b6ce-419f-9e86-ae93802d2682</AnyString>
<AnyString key="268435461" type="0x0b8bea18"></AnyString>
<AnyString key="268435462" type="0x0b8bea18">00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</AnyString>
<AnyString key="3" type="0x0b8bea18">2d6839c5-0b7c-48a1-9c55-4bd9cc873b0f</AnyString>
<AnyString key="5" type="0x0b8bea18">nose,brow,eyes,ears,</AnyString>
<AnyString key="6" type="0x0b8bea18">00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</AnyString>
</cGZPropertySetString>

[ Edited 21-11-2004 07:43PM ]

pinhead

21st Nov 2004, 08:03 PM

Nice found, RGiles. I didn't know about that. :)

RGiles

21st Nov 2004, 08:11 PM

I think it is. There appears to be one for every sim in your neighborhood, and then extras that just have raw data. I don't know if they are placeholders for default characters like the reaper.

In SimPE, find the Instance number of the sim who's DNA you want to change. the "Sound File Mapping" ;) for that sim will have the same Instance number. (Not the character's package filename.)

I just started playing with these last night, but here's what I know so far, as well as what I think I know. :) I'm numbering lines starting at the first "AnyString".

Line 1: This is a genetic hair color. I believe it describes your sim's Dominant gene for hair color.

Line 2: This is a genetic skin tone. Again, I believe it is the sim's dominant gene for skin.

Line 3: This is a hair color, and I believe it describes the a recessive gene your sim carries but is not using. This will only be different from Line 1 for characters born in game. Sims you create don't have any recessive traits, so the line will be the same.

Line 4: Skin tone again, and this time I think it's a recessive trait. Same as what I said above about recessive hair color, except it would be the same as line 2.

Line 5: An eye color. I believe it's your sim's recessive eye color. I'm just trying to figure the dominant and recessive thing based on the traits of babies that were born in my game, so I might be wrong.

Line 6: Always seems to be blank, t least in the ones I've looked at so far.

Line 7: Again a skin tone, but in some cases (aliens, maybe custom skins) a strange and usually negative (-) number appears here. I don't know what it does, so when I change it I make it the same as line 2, which is what it would be on a sim out of bodyshop.

Line 8: An eye color. This I believe is your sim's dominant gene for eyes.

Line 9: a list of facial features. I think it's saying this parents would be most likely to pass along the traits listed. But I can't prove it. :)

Line 10: again with the skin color. I don't know why. Bodyshop makes this the same as Line 2, so I do too.

Some odd files may have more lines after that and I don't have a clue why yet.

You could edit this a couple of ways. Just change the lines you want to the new values you'd like, or ceate a new sim in a temp neighborhood that has the skin eyes and haircolor you want, and copy the text from their "Sound Mapping" file into your existing sim. I'd suggest doing it that way for custom skins. For default skin hair or eyes, you use these:

32dee745-b6ce-419f-9e86-ae93802d2682 = Brown eyes
51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7 = Green eyes
e43f33602-3a08-4755-8b83-a0d37a6c424b = Light blue eyes
12d4f3e1-fdbe-4fe7-ace3-46dd9ff52b51 = Alien eyes

00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Light skin
00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Tan skin
00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Medium skin
00000004-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Dark skin
6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46 = Alien skin

00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Black hair
00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Brown hair
00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Blond hair
00000004-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Red hair

I forgot to get the codes for dark blue and grey eyes. Oops. Anyway most of you don't need that, you know where to find it anyway.

Oh, after you edit the file do not forget to click "commit" before saving. I make that mistake constantly. %-6

Cheers,
RG

Edit: I fogot to note, changing this file should not have any effect on the way your sim LOOKS in the game. This should change only the genes they are going to pass along to offspring. So to change the look of alien babies that will be born in the game, you shouldn't need to change how Pollination Tech looks (you never see him anyway) only change this file.

[ Edited 21-11-2004 10:12PM ]

RGiles

21st Nov 2004, 10:14 PM

I made two misakes in the post above... typed Line 1 where I meant Line 2. The corrections are now in red in the above post.

tomorrow

23rd Nov 2004, 10:44 AM

Might want to add this to the wiki.

snazza

15th Dec 2004, 07:26 PM

Rgiles you are a legend for figuring this out. =)

RGiles

15th Dec 2004, 07:31 PM

:D I didn't think many people bothered to notice it at all, actually. But it was driving me CRAZY for a while. If I'd make a blonde haired, blue eyed couple into a black haired, green-eyed couple... they would have a blonde haired, blue eyed baby every time... So I was going a bit nuts.

Thanks
RG

snazza

15th Dec 2004, 08:28 PM

Yes! Previously PatchesSims posted info it was the Skintone XML that determined this. I was very confused. Not to say that the XML doesn't play some part too I don't know.

The lack of enthusiasm probably comes from people not being bothered to confirm it. Myself included because I remember I did read this a while ago but just wasn't concerned enough because I hadn't arrived at the problem yet myself. There was only trouble for people like you and me who change the skintone or whatever of a sim but the info never gets updated in the "Sound File Mapping" :). Although Karybydis just told us in the chat that Sound File Mapping is used for Sound File Mapping too. I didn't understand but anyway he updated the wiki in some way.

I think its good to pull this thread back up so people can look at it. I have never seen it referred to anywhere. The fellas in the chat room who I was asking were also unaware of this thread.

Thanks again mate because it was driving me nuts too. Good thing you already had it figured out =D

Also I would LOVE to see this made more easy to edit in SimPE :). I want to test some of those values you said you were not 100% sure of. Is there anything you are sure of now that you weren't sure of before when you posted it?

RGiles

15th Dec 2004, 09:06 PM

I would like to see it at least added to the Cloning (Sim Surgery is it?) part of SimPE. It definitely belongs there.

RG

anachronista

16th Dec 2004, 04:02 PM

How would you transfer an entire DNA file of this type from one sim to another? For example: I changed a townie (sim A) to look differently (like sim B) and married him to one of my sims. The original townie's (sim A) DNA, of course, will show up in the sim children. I located the changed sim's (sim A)file, and want the data from the change to carry on in the family, so if I can locate the file of sim B, can I copy it wholesale into sim A's file? These two sims are from different neighborhoods. Warning: I am technologically challenged.

RGiles

16th Dec 2004, 04:18 PM

Yep. You can simply copy and paste the text wholesale, of course replacing the original text.

Isn't it nice when something's easy? :D

anachronista

16th Dec 2004, 11:13 PM

After posting, I tried exactly that, copy and paste into the text file. I transferred sim B's DNA text into sim A's file using notepad, then deleted the unwanted DNA text, then clicked "commit". That was when SimPE went all wonky on me. I clicked another file, then went back to the file I changed which then showed me nothing but a blank page, not even a file window. Then file after file started turning up with the same blankness. I finally got out of SimPE, and went back into my game. Everything seemed okay to this point. Then I got back out, and deleted one of the children in the household, with the aim testing to see if the DNA was different. When I tried to enter the house again, the game crashed. Three times. I went back to restore the neighborhood in question from backup through SimPE and instead of restoring, my neighborhood was deleted. I think SimPE screwed me over, and even though it's not a big loss, I don't think very well of it at this point. :flame:

snazza

17th Dec 2004, 02:07 PM

Sorry you lost your neighbourhood :( but please don't blame SimPE. Quaxi when he implemented the backing up of neighbourhoods said as he always does that it that it was very experimental. If I were you I'd keep using SimPE and just back up manually, you cant go wrong with that arrangement.

Sorry you lost the neighbourhood though :(

anachronista

17th Dec 2004, 05:37 PM

I retrieved my lost neighborhood by finding the backup files and loading them into the neighborhood folder. (whew) My apologies for the rant and chalk it up to inexperience with the program and my own ineptiude kicking in. :dolt: But then I had to test out the theory.

Scenario: My sim, Virginia, (custom blonde streaked hair and Maxis grey eyes) marries the Kennedy Cox townie character. He's Captain Hero, after all, and what sim lady can resist that? I wanted to give Kennedy a different look though, so I made him up to look like a (black haired, deep blue eyed) sim I created called Jack Guapo. (You Spanish speakers out there will get that one.)

Well, when the babies come, The girls have Virginia's custom blonde hair and the boys have Jack's Maxis black hair, but then they all have brown eyes! Now, I have nothing against brown-eyed babies, having been one myself, but this was against type. I came to suspect that the original (brown eyed) Kennedy Cox's genes were still swimming around in the pool.

So to cut to the chase, I finally got to replacing the DNA data from Jack Guapo's file into Kennedy Cox's, and the next baby was a black-haired boy with deep blue eyes like Dad's. Yay! So I'm satisfied as to the DNA text file swap having been effective. The kicker is, though that I grew the boy up and he has pointed ears and eyebrows! Captain Hero's son is little Mr. Spock! I made both his parents and don't remember putting that in the recipe!

I'm not upset about this, in fact it's kind of fun, but the only conclusion I can draw is that Maxis might be hiding surprises in the white-bread DNA. Oh, and RGiles, incredible work finding this out. Thanks!

Airelda

18th Dec 2004, 07:46 AM

I'm so glad I found this thread. I have been cloning over many of my Maxis sims (the Goths, Pleasants etc) to make them more attractive, but I had no idea until I read this that the cloned sims would not pass down their new "genes" to their children.

I think I understand the gist of this post, but I have a very untechnical mind and very limited experience with SimPe. Nevertheless, I am very keen to alter my sim's DNA so that they pass down their new lovlier looks to future generations.

Would you all forgive me if I ask some basic questions and if I request that you fully explain every step how to do this. I am very ignorant!

Here are my questions:

1) To upate my Maxis characters I first cloned the old Maxis sim (let's say Angela Pleasant) with SimPe's Sim Surgery option. Then I gave the clone her new skintone and eyes, modified her facial features a bit, then gave her a name and moved her into my neighbourhood as a temporary citizen called "1 Temp". Then I went back into SimPe and found the Maxis Angela, and cloned the new, customised Angela over the top. This worked fine - my new Angela looks great! Here is my question - if I want my new Angela to be able to pass on her custom skintone and eyes would it be okay to copy 1 Temp's DNA directly over Angela Pleasant's original DNA?

2) The new Angela has softer, prettier features. If I clone 1 Temp's DNA over will Angela's children inherit her facial structure as well as her skintone and eye colour?

3) I have no idea how to find a sim "instance number" in SimPe, or really what to do after I actually find the instance number. Could someone write a really clear step-by-step how to for someone who has 0 technical knowledge?

4) I thought I might ask all of you here also about some sims I have tried to clone to make more attractive who will not change their appearance no matter how many times I have tried to overwrite their apperance. Lilith Pleasant is one of these. She is still looking like her original self in the game despite her thumbnail in SimPe and SimEnhancer being updated to the new version. Are there some sims you simply cannot change the appearance of? Is there another way around this so I can clone over Lilith? I have tried to change her many times both in Sim Enhancer and SimPe with no luck. Other Maxis sims who have not changed their looks are Brandi Broke, and John, Jennifer and Lucy Burb.

RGiles

18th Dec 2004, 08:00 AM

I can't help you with the Lillith Pleasant problem. I haven't tried cloning anything but NPCs, I think.

But for the rest of it...

1) That's right. You'd copy all of the text in the file I've described here (Temp 1's DNA file) and paste it over top of the text in Angela's DNA file.

2) You don't have to anything at all to have her pass down the new features. If you do not alter the DNA file, then she will pass along the old skin and eyes, but the new features.

3) In SimPE in your neighborhood file, click the main menu, and then Sim Browser. Look for Angela's picture and name, and double click on it. At the bottom of simPE, her file will open. On the bottom half of the screen you'll see several tabs... click the one for "Packed File". There is a list of numbers. You want the one labled "Instance".

RG

anachronista

18th Dec 2004, 02:57 PM

This thread has provided a solution to a large issue for me in Sims 2. Most of the babies born in my game have been true to parental type, but once in a while I got a surprise. For instance:

Strangetown's Erin Singles (S1 skintone) and Gordon Kim ( S2 skintone, former NPC, grocery delivery) were having S4 skintone babies.

Veronaville's Ariel Capp ( S1 skintone) and Steven Dallas ( S2 skintone, former NPC, maid) were having S4 and S3 babies.

Strangetown's Buck Grunt (S1 skintone ) and Jill Smith (S1 skintone) were having S3 skintone babies. At first I attributed this to the fact that Jill had S2 and S3 uncles, Pascal and Lazlo Curious.

Disclaimer: I have nothing against brown offspring, as long as that's what their parents are, but it's a bit jarring to produce something so drastically off-type.

On examining the DNA text files of Ariel Capp and Steven Dallas, it almost seemed that skin and hair tone numbers got transposed. I wonder if these were the result of programming errors?

Anyway, this thread was the answer to that big question in my mind. Thanks to RGiles, next time I get a skintone, hair color or eye color surprise, I know what to do about it.

PatchesSim2

23rd Dec 2004, 04:34 AM

Yes! Previously PatchesSims posted info it was the Skintone XML that determined this. I was very confused. Not to say that the XML doesn't play some part too I don't know.

I was talking about unlocking the alien skin tone for use in body shop, that's how originally re-created the pollination Technition that's currently on the exchange, I never said that controlled his genetics (I'm always bad at explaining things, so that may be why). The skintone xml also has some genetic values that might impact how probable the gene might show up, but I'm not entirely sure about it, if that's what you were refering to.

Anyway, so the Sim DNA sub-files (or whatever they are called) have the same instance as the Sim GUID in Sim Description? I'm just a little confused on that...

snazza

23rd Dec 2004, 05:18 AM

Patches I wasn't talking about the pollination tech. I was thinking of something you wrote on the exchange. I can't find that now. I thought you linked to it here: http://72.9.230.162/showthread.php?t=17647 but it doesn't seem to be there. I also asked you in the chatbox. This was all a while ago.

Anyway I don't know the xml probably does have some part to play like to decide which of the two parents' dominant genetic skintone is more likely to get chosen for the child. I thought about it later and realised that your information doesn't necessarily conflict with this and I probably misread it. My apologies :)

Quaxi has renamed the "Sound File Mapping" to "Sim DNA" now within the neighbourhood file.

About your confusion. The instance of your sim's "Sim Description" file is the same as the instance of your sim's "Sim DNA" file. So find your sim's description file and look at the instance. Say its "0x0000000A", then you click the Sim DNA filetype category on the left, put "A" in the instance filter and you'll see the Sim DNA file for that sim.

RGiles

23rd Dec 2004, 05:28 AM

Quaxi has renamed the "Sound File Mapping" to "Sim DNA" now within the neighbourhood file.
Oh cool! I didn't notice. I have been hoping that this would get added to the cloning feature. I didn't want to nag Quaxi about it though. I have definitely nagged him enough, and still have more nagging in mind. I don't know how he eats and sleeps and works and STILL has the time to update SimPE so often. Perhaps he's cloned himself too.

RG

Airelda

27th Dec 2004, 01:02 PM

I have downloaded the latest version of SimPe and am trying once again to change my sim's DNA without sucess.

Here is my process. I am trying to change Daniel Pleasant's entire DNA to look like a customised clone I made of him.

1) First of all, in "Sim DNA" and clicked on the line that matched the clone's instance number
2) I went to Plugin View which opens the "CPF Editor"
3) There are 10 lines of code. I clicked on each one and copied the Value into a Word Pad document
4) I opened the line which contains Daniel Pleasant's instance number
5) I clicked through each line of code and pasted the clone's numerical sequence for each line of code.
6) I noticed two things - firstly the values I entered would instantly default back and I was unable to save the new values in Daniel's file. How do you save the new values?
7) Daniel has an extra line of code in his DNA sequence. On line 9 he has this: "4 (dtString) = -858851246:2143197002:1;"

My clone does not have this line of code. Is this normal?

Thanks for any help.

RGiles

27th Dec 2004, 01:50 PM

Let me take a look, because I know Quaxi has updated this since I made the first post....

OK, in the old version it appeared as an XML file and you coulc replace the entire thing in one shot, but now you've got to do it line by line just like you described.

When you paste in your new value for each line, you need to click the blue text below the editing box that says "change". and then when you're done making all the changes, click the commit button.

About the extra line, I don't know what it refers to... maybe some reference to his parents' DNA files as well? If anyone does know why some sims have more lines and what they mean I'm sure interested. The way that the SimDNA plugin is set up at the moment, you can't delete the line I guess, so there's nothing to do but leave it.

Airelda

28th Dec 2004, 09:48 PM

RGiles - I really appreciate your help and answers as I try to work this out - thank you!

What you told me was very helpful and I saved Daniel's file exactly as you said. I went into the game and had him make a baby with a Maxis skinned and eyed woman to test his DNA.

Would you believe they had twins! One was custom eyed and skinned, and the other was Maxis eyed and skinned (a freak baby too!) Isn't that funny? I have no idea why the twins would have different genetics from one another. I thought custom content always overruled Maxis content? Maybe I am wrong??

I am going to have to get Daniel to have another baby by this woman to check the genetics again. Poor Mary-Sue Pleasant. She's going to freak when she finds out Daniel has had five illegitimate children with other women! It's all in the name of science!

Danton

3rd Jan 2005, 04:46 PM

:bump:

Quaxi, I know you do a lot for everyone updating SimPE so often, but do you have any plans to insert the DNA features in the surgery process?

Thanks!

Morague

21st Jan 2005, 02:38 AM

Here's what I've noticed about that extra line of code that some sims have.

Every single birth child born in the game has it. None of the identical twins born in the game have it. The female of one set of fraternal twins does not have it but the male does. The other fraternal twins have it.

I haven't reached any conclusions on this - as I only have 5 sets of twins but maybe this is related to twins. I have 2 sets of identical twins & 3 sets of fraternal twins.

Grapholina

28th Jan 2005, 06:24 PM

I ran a little test; just for the fun of things.

I created a new couple, both black hair and brown eyes. One light skinned and the other with tan skin.

I then changed the DNA for the mother and father to show blonde hair, light blue eyes, and light skin tone.

The resulting children (2 tries), both with black hair and brown eyes.

Upon examination of their DNA files, both kids DID get the blonde hair, blue eyes, and light skin tones, but they didn't look like that at all.

So. Is this correct in that no apparent physical changes take place in the next generation after you've changed the parents' DNA? Or are we supposed to see immediate results in the parents' offspring?

:confused:

RGiles

28th Jan 2005, 07:16 PM

Did you start the pregnancy before you changed the DNA?

My test couple when I was trying to figure this out: I gave them both black hair, brown eyes and the darkest skin because all are dominant. Then I changed the DNA to blonde hair, green eyes, and the lightest skin because all are recessive.

They'd always have a blonde haired, green eyed, light skinned baby when I edited this file. If I only changed their appearance, they would have a baby with dark skin, hair and eyes every time, even if I totally replaced their character files with another.

RG

Grapholina

28th Jan 2005, 07:44 PM

Yes, I modified their DNA before pregnancy. Interesting though, once they transitioned to toddlers, they have blonde hair, but still brown eyes. AND.... they have extremely pointy ears. Elf-like.

I'm going to try it again. Are we certain the numbers given up in the first post for light blue eyes is correct? Has to be because brown eyes is definitely what the parents had to begin with and the code is quite different from what you have for light blue eyes. Anyway, back to the drawing board.

Grapholina

29th Jan 2005, 03:15 AM

RGiles, never mind. I found the problem. I used the code posted above for light blue yes, but that number is incorrect. The first sequence of numbers should end in 360 and not 3602.

Mihura

5th Feb 2005, 12:10 AM

Sorry but I'm not especially good in english so... :beer:

THANK YOU RGiles for your explanation of the Sim DNA in SimPE !

Last night I wondered (and I was a little excited too...) :blink: "it seems so simple : find the line for the skin and find a valuable code for replace it and it would be...". Finally I have found the solution here, 4 lines for the skin (!), ok now I will know !! ;-)

Sincerly this tutorial was be very helpful for me, so again THANKS a lot ! :bump:

IgnorantBliss

12th Feb 2005, 12:54 AM

I'm getting confused by the skintone DNA. First, line 2 is called supposedly the code for the "dominant" skin tone. However, as far as I understand, no skin tone is dominant over the other (I know you might be only referring to "dominant" as in what is the showing skintone of the sim), but also that a child's actual skintone might be different from both his parents. If we have a child inherit S1 from his mom and S3 from his dad, his actual skintone might end up being S2. How would this show up in the code? Or does it show up in the DNA at all?

Now that I just figured out (today) how to read the DNA in SimPE, I'm making some interesting findings with 2nd and 3rd generation sims. Naturally, for all sims created in CAS or by Maxis, all the four lines for skin DNA code are the same. For second and third generation sims, it appears that line 2 is for the skintone they inherited from one parent, and line 4 for the skintone from the other parent, but the code in line 2 seems to have nothing to do with the skin color they actually have, or "dominance". Say, a sim with 00000001 on line 2 and 00000002 on line 4 might "exhibit" skintone 2. These lines only seem to indicate the two genes he got from both of his parents, but not what his "dominant", or rather, actual skintone is. However, both lines 7 and 10 always seem to have the code for the skintone the child actual has. In the example, lines 7 and 10 would be identical with line 4 and not 2. (Again, I have to say I don't know yet what would happen if the child's actual skintone is different from both parents'.)

I hope I'm making sense, because I keep getting confused myself. Overall, what I'm trying to say is that maybe it's better not to call line 2 the "dominant" skin gene, because there is no dominance with skin genes, and because line 2 doesn't seem to indicate the sim's actual skin color, only one of the skin color genes he inherited.

RGiles

12th Feb 2005, 02:41 AM

You're making perfect sense, IgnorantBliss. That's a very good explanation. Thanks. :)

This thread was actually my first post on this site. What I was sure of at the time of posting it was which lines related to hair, skin, and eyes. But I didn't and still don't understand all the possibilities that are stored in it. Any additional infor you may gather is very very welcome. :D

RG

IgnorantBliss

12th Feb 2005, 02:13 PM

OK, I've done some more "research" into this, and found out the following by using the Make A Baby option in CAS (because having actual babies born in game would have taken way too long for this). I assume that the genetics work the same, whether the couple has a baby in the game, or created by using their genetics in CAS. The following only applies to the four Maxis skintones, I have no idea if this applies to the alien and custom skintone genetics. If any of the following information is wrong, please correct me.

- Lines 2 and 4 in the sim's DNA stand for the two genes for skintone the child got from his parents. The order doesn't seem to matter (whether it's from mom or dad, or what skintone it is doesn't seem to affect their order in which one is 2 and which one 4). The child's actual skintone isn't necessarily either one of these.

- Lines 7 and 10, on the other hand, match the child's expressed skintone. If parents that are S1/S1 and S3/S3 by genetics have a child who expresses skintone S2, the child's DNA will have skintones S1 and S3 on lines 2 and 4 (in either order), and S2 on both lines 7 and 10.

- The official Prima guide says that if a child gets genes S1 and S3 from his parents but expresses S2, he will still pass on either S1 or S3 on to his offspring. I found this to be not true: What ever the child's original genes from his parents, if he expresses S2, he will also pass that skintone, and that skintone only, on to his own children. If a sim's genes are S1/S2, and his expressed skintone S1, S1 will be the only gene he'll pass on to his offspring.

I repeated the process in CAS several time with different combinations, and the results were consistent. I'm not 100% sure if it works the same for babies born in the game, but, based on my limited experience with in-game births, it seems to be true.

TanyaLee776

12th Feb 2005, 02:23 PM

wow ummm.... that's alot of info

MaxoidTom

13th Feb 2005, 02:49 AM

The prima guide is correct. One set of skintones genes is what was inherited from the parents, the other is what will be expressed (may depend on if it is a custom content skintone that has been removed).

RGiles

13th Feb 2005, 04:31 AM

IgnorantBliss

13th Feb 2005, 06:43 AM

The Prima guide didn't seem to be correct about that for breeding in CAS, but I'll have to see what happens with actual babies born in game. When I had parents with S1/S1 and S3/S3 have a grown-up kid (in CAS) whose genetics were S1/S3 but expressed skintone S2, his offspring inherited S2 from him. I clearly saw it in SimPE. You can try it yourself, too.

I may have to consider using the Insiminator to be able to speed up breeding in the game now. I'll get back to you when I have more information.

IgnorantBliss

13th Feb 2005, 08:26 AM

OK, I used the Insimenator to breed some babies in game. I created a female with skintone 3 (S3/S3) and a male with skintone 1 (S1/S1) in CAS. I got the female pregnant with the male's twins by the Insimenator. Both the twins, of course, have genes S3/S1 for skintone. One of them expresses S1, and the other S2 (the latter's skin DNA is S3 and S1 for lines 2 and 4, and S2 for lines 7 and 10 in SimPE).

I created a female in CAS who's S1/S1, and of course expresses skintone 1 as well, so there is no possibility of gene S2 coming from her. I got this female pregnant with twins with the male twin with expressed skintone 2 from the first family. Both the twins born have genes S1/S2 for lines 2 and 4 in SimPE. One of them expresses S1, and the other S2. Neither one of the twins have S3 anywhere in their DNA. Lines 7 and 10 show the skintone they express: S1 for one, S2 for the other.

The conclusion is that the Prima guide is incorrect about skintone genetics for second and third generation sims. The second generation sims pass on the gene for whatever the skintone they are expressing, regardless of the genes they got from their parents. They can express any skintone within the limits of the skintone genes from their parents, but the skintone they pass on to the next generation is only the one they express.

If anybody gets different results with their games, let me know of course. But the results in CAS and in the game (with the Insimenator) seem awfully consistent.

MaxoidTom

14th Feb 2005, 06:55 PM

Tom,

So if the Sim has inherited S1 and S3 from her parents, and her expressed skintone is S2, what gene can she pass on to her own children? Only S1 or S3 (from the parents)? Or only S2? Or any of these 3?

Thanks
RG

The child will pass on S1 and S3. That way we don't eventually get a whole neighborhood of skintones "in the middle."

***EDIT***
Actually, this is the way it was, but it was changed. Users found it really weird that descendents way down the line may start to have lightest skintone or the darkest skintone when their parents had medium skintones. S2 will be passed down.

MaxoidTom

14th Feb 2005, 06:57 PM

MaxoidTom

14th Feb 2005, 06:59 PM

BTW, if you start up the game with the testingCheatsEnabled set to true in your userStartup.cheat file, you can use the cheat: simDNA <simfirstname> while in a lot to see what the game thinks the DNA is.

Let me try to explain what is supposed to happen (barring any bugs) for skintone inheritance.

- An *expressed* skintone gene is passed down from each parent.
- If one and only one of the genes inherited is custom content (or alien), it will be expressed.
- If both genes inherited are custom content (or alien), then it follows these rules:
* If both parents are "pure-blooded" in terms of expressed skintone or are both not "pure-blooded" there is a 50/50 chance that either inherited gene is expressed.
* If only one of the parents is "pure-blooded" in terms of expressed skintone, then that gene is expressed (this is so users see alien babies as green after alien abduction).
- If only one gene inherited is custom content, it is automatically expressed and the other gene is set as "recessive."
- If both genes are Maxis skintones (i.e. have genetic values != 0), then a search is made for all skintones that have genetic values between the high bound and low bound. That skintone is set as the expressed skintone for both genes.

The skintone range allele was deprecated and is now just a reference point.

IgnorantBliss

14th Feb 2005, 07:58 PM

Thanks for confirming my findings, MaxoidTom :).

Can you tell me if the lines 7 and 10 in the DNA (as listed by RGiles) are both always for the expressed skintone of the sim? It seems that way with the four Maxis skintones, but there were some mentions earlier that with alien or other skintones there might be something different.

MaxoidTom

14th Feb 2005, 08:15 PM

line 7 is the first gene of the expressed skintone.
line 10 is the second gene of the expressed skintone.

the allele type is laid out like so:
0 = unknown
1 = hair color
2 = skintone range
3 = eye color
4 = facial features (deprecated)
5 = dominant facial features
6 = expressed skintone

The dominant/first gene is written out to the property set with the type given above. The recessive/second gene is written out to the property set or'd with 0x10000000 (i.e. type | 0x10000000).

IgnorantBliss

14th Feb 2005, 08:48 PM

MaxoidTom

14th Feb 2005, 09:03 PM

OK, this is something I have to look into more still, because I'm not understanding everything yet :lol:. If you don't mind answering my questions, though, I'd like to know what's the purpose of two expressed skintone genes, since they will supposedly always be the same? Or can they sometimes be different? Since a sim can only express one skintone at a time, I would have to assume no.

The expressed skintone genes are only set equal for skintone genes that do not have a genetic value of 0 (i.e. custom content that hasn't been mucked with), meaning the normal Maxis skintones (not alien).

The reason for this is so that if a sim has an alien baby, that alien baby has both the alien skintone and the skintone from the normal parent. The skintone from the normal parent can be passed down to future generations later; this is so custom content isn't completely lost if there is an alien abduction which results in offspring.

IgnorantBliss

14th Feb 2005, 09:13 PM

Ahh, ok, thanks. I have yet to have alien or custom skin sims born in the game. This is good to know for future reference.

grykon

14th Feb 2005, 09:32 PM

Hey MaxoidTom...gotta question for a game guru such as yourself...and it kinda fits in this topic...From what I have read in this thread the only DNA is color of hair,eyes,skin? How does the game determine what children look like? I ask because every child born in my pleasantville town looks like every other child of the same sex...The hair/eyes/skin maybe different but the facial structure looks too simuliar...

BTW RGiles...Thanks so much for your efforts on this!!

MaxoidTom

14th Feb 2005, 09:52 PM

In an effort to reduce grotesque looking children, the changes that the modifiers and archetypes make to a sim's face (i.e. in CAS) are toned down a bit. This leads to similar looking characters for the younger ages, but it was a tradeoff because extreme features that look OK on adults do not look OK on children. Also, there is a certain amount of smoothing that happens for this reason. To get rid of this smoothing, there is a cheat, "faceBlendLimits on/off" that you can use before creating a child.

FYI:
Each sim has a copy of its face for each age/gender combination. That is used for passing down facial features.

grykon

15th Feb 2005, 01:12 AM

Thanks for the reply Tom, but I mean all children in the neighborhood look the same, such as my daughter of the Burps looks like the daughter of the Sims with no 'blood' ties between them...only difference is color of hair/eyes/skin. The son of the Sims looks just like the son of the Kims, again no 'blood' ties, the only children that look different are Maxis characters and NPC's/townies...the only children that are looking any different right now are the children of the Parris family since when I created the father I gave him extremely low cheekbones...makes for some strange toddlers, but they get better as they get older...

MaxoidTom

15th Feb 2005, 01:22 AM

grykon

15th Feb 2005, 01:35 AM

Yes, because of the smoothing out code, most children will look the same (like the base face for the child).

Okay..thanks Tom...I'll try that...do I need to turn it off before the couple gets pregnant, or before birth? Thanks again, I appreciate it!

RGiles

15th Feb 2005, 01:40 AM

Thanks for the additions, Tom. This is very helpful to those of us trying to create our own sets of "default" townies, for instance.

RG

MaxoidTom

15th Feb 2005, 03:40 AM

Okay..thanks Tom...I'll try that...do I need to turn it off before the couple gets pregnant, or before birth? Thanks again, I appreciate it!

Before birth. We figured the time to blend the faces would be acceptable then (birthing) and not straight after WooHoo.

grykon

15th Feb 2005, 03:50 PM

Before birth. We figured the time to blend the faces would be acceptable then (birthing) and not straight after WooHoo.

Cool...I got a whole herd of babies waiting to be born in different houses...so now I can test this out! Thanks for the great info!

grykon

17th Feb 2005, 03:25 PM

Too cool...I now have 4 children that do not look like all the other children in the neighborhood! Thanks Tom! Can hardly wait to see what they look like when they get full grown!

Danton

17th Feb 2005, 05:01 PM

Tom, when is the sex of the offspring selected? Straight after woohooing or before the birth pop up message?

MaxoidTom

17th Feb 2005, 05:24 PM

twojeffs

17th Feb 2005, 08:18 PM

Before the birth pop up message. The gender is controlled in the code and the the scripting system, so there is no current way for modders to determine the sex of the offspring (well, without hacking the executable).

Argh...I wish I would have asked that question a long time ago. If you only knew how much time I've spent trying to get gender selection for babies to work. Well, at least now I can quit wasting my time and move on to other projects.

Ancient Sim

20th Feb 2005, 01:46 PM

Should the face limits blending be on or off to get more different looking kids? I am somewhat fed-up of all mine looking the same, even as adults. The first child born in my game was Cassandra's daughter to Don and her face has been reproduced so many times (including in townies) it's ridiculous! I even ended-up with a repairwoman who was the spitting image of Bella the other day.

grykon

20th Feb 2005, 01:57 PM

Off to make them look different...I'm so glad MT told us about this, this is one hint/tip that I wish they would have put in HUGE big letters all over the package. I'm thinking of just adding it to my start file so it will be in the game automatically when I start...if I can get it to handle 2 commands...*grumble grumble*

Ancient Sim

24th Feb 2005, 02:48 AM

I'll be trying it now I know what it's all about. I only have one child waiting to be born at the moment, but I can soon sort that out. I am desperate to see some toddlers who don't look like all the other toddlers, so I hope it works for that.

simdebster

12th Mar 2005, 11:55 PM

What about the DNA for the nose? Is it included in the xml Sim DNA in Simpe? I really would like to change the nose DNA for a Sim that I have.

IgnorantBliss

13th Mar 2005, 05:56 AM

What about the DNA for the nose? Is it included in the xml Sim DNA in Simpe? I really would like to change the nose DNA for a Sim that I have.

As far as I know, the DNA only says if the the sim's nose is a dominant feature or not. In those about ten lines of code you can't really fiddle with how the nose looks.

simdebster

13th Mar 2005, 09:48 AM

As far as I know, the DNA only says if the the sim's nose is a dominant feature or not. In those about ten lines of code you can't really fiddle with how the nose looks.

Thanks for the answer. I was afraid someone was going to tell me that LOL! I cloned, changed the nose, and created a sim from an existing sim, then compared the DNA. I could not see any difference between the two in SimPe. This leads me to conclude that the code governing the nose DNA is probably elsewhere (hopefully not in the exe so that we can still find it).

RGiles

13th Mar 2005, 05:52 PM

simdebster,

There isn't a DNA file for the shape of their facial features. The shap of their face is stored in geometry files in the Sim's package. When you change the shape of their face, you've automatically changed the facial features that will be passed down to their offspring. There's nothing else to look for. You're done :D

Yay
RG

simdebster

14th Mar 2005, 06:25 PM

RG,

So what you are saying is that if I change an existing sim with SimPe's Sim Surgery, the new facial features (nose) will be what is passed on to the offspring? I hope that it is that easy!

Danton

15th Mar 2005, 10:54 PM

There isn't a DNA file for the shape of their facial features. The shap of their face is stored in geometry files in the Sim's package. When you change the shape of their face, you've automatically changed the facial features that will be passed down to their offspring. There's nothing else to look for. You're done :D

If the thing was like you say, the home plastic surgery kit that shipped with University would change the DNA too, but Maxis guys (Tim almost everytime) always say that it only changes subject's visuals not their DNAs.

MaxoidTom

16th Mar 2005, 06:16 AM

We now store two copies of the face. One for the visual representation and one to pass onto the descendents.

cathair2005

16th Mar 2005, 07:49 AM

I remember a while back I tried changing the skin colour using the character file. The trick for changing eye colour was to do so in SimPE and then change appearance in the mirror then go outside the house.

But with skin colour, it only managed to change your character's head colour. So I'd have a light coloured sim with a dark head. Sim surgery doesn't seem to work with university so it looks like I'm stuck with the skin colour I chose in the first place.

simdebster

16th Mar 2005, 08:31 PM

Maxoid Tom,

Could you tell me how to change the copy of the face that is passed onto the descendents to match that of the visual representation? I would be so thankful to you if you would.

MaxoidTom

18th Mar 2005, 06:42 AM

xptl297

21st Mar 2005, 11:37 AM

Danton

21st Mar 2005, 11:52 PM

Tom, when the sex of the offspring is selected? Straight after woohooing or before the birth pop up message?

Before the birth pop up message. The gender is controlled in the code and the the scripting system, so there is no current way for modders to determine the sex of the offspring (well, without hacking the executable).

Tom, how this information fits Brandi Broke?
She comes pregnant when we install TS2, but always gives birth to a baby boy... (and I can be wrong, but always a boy with black hair, maybe even the same genetic "looking"). Was she programmed to give birth to a boy?

MaxoidTom

22nd Mar 2005, 10:27 PM

MaxoidTom, Everything is far too technical for normal players. Why is that way? If you bother all the work to change the phisical appearance of a Sim I suppose automatically means that you DO NOT want those characteristics to repeat. I changed a very ugly adopted child that became even uglier when growing into an extremely beautiful boy. He is recently grown to adult. If his babies are going to look exactly the way he was before, I'm entering in a mood to make my first Simicide. In most, why do all toddlers get the ugliest hair ever placed (the short curly hair) no matter how the hair of the parents look like? I started to clone all kind of hair except the hated default. I make no mod but just guarantee that my Sims have a "custom" hair.

The plastic surgery kit is an *appearance* modifier, not a genetic modifier. While you may want it to alter genetics, it does not, and was explicitly designed not to do so. You may disagree with this decision and that is your perogative. That does not change what the object does.

My explanations on how to get around this may be "too technical" for the normal user, but the people who do understand and make the modding tools can benefit from this information and make tools that allow the normal players to alter facial genetics. This discussion wasn't meant for users who do not wish to know the "mysteries of Sim DNA" as the title of the thread states.

To answer your question on hairstyles, sims get a hairstyle picked from a set of defaults (which you apparently do not like). It is relatively easy to mark other hairstyles as defaults using one of the modding tools.

Please remember that not everyone plays the game they way you do. If the plastic surgery kit altered genetics, I'm sure there would be plenty of complaints on the boards that it wasn't realistic.

MaxoidTom

22nd Mar 2005, 10:28 PM

Tom, how this information fits Brandi Broke?
She comes pregnant when we install TS2, but always gives birth to a baby boy... (and I can be wrong, but always a boy with black hair, maybe even the same genetic "looking"). Was she programmed to give birth to a boy?

Brandi may be scripted to do something special. The "fact" that she always gives birth to a boy may simply be because of the starting conditions of the game. If you played another family and had it create a baby, then go back to Brandi's house, the child may be different.

xptl297

23rd Mar 2005, 12:52 PM

Motoki

23rd Mar 2005, 04:34 PM

To answer your question on hairstyles, sims get a hairstyle picked from a set of defaults (which you apparently do not like). It is relatively easy to mark other hairstyles as defaults using one of the modding tools.

Actually they don't get random hairs from a set of defaults, sims born in the game always get the same hairstyle. I think that is the main problem people have with it is that they always get that same hairstyle no matter what.

Now if you adopt a toddler or child then their hairstyle is randomized, giving variety. But when an infant, either born or adopted, grows up to a toddler there appears to be no random function for choosing a hairstyle or if there is then it has never worked.

The funny thing is, although there are several toddler hairstyles, you will never end up seeing them on your toddler sims unless you adopt or create toddlers in the CAS because it is not possible (without hacks) to change a toddler's hair.

Speaking of which, I wonder why the first patch fixed it so you could change the toddlers outfit but not their hairstyle. The interface certainly allows it because people have hacked mirrors to remove the restriction on toddlers and they work just fine.

I guess for me it's not a major issue but a minor annoyance since I do have a hacked mirror and can change the toddlers hairstyles. But IMHO I don't think we should have to resort to hacks to customize our toddlers appearance when all the other age groups can do it without hacks and I also think there really should be some randomness and variety among the toddlers hairstyles that get generated, or else where are there even multiple toddler hair meshes then?

Grapholina

23rd Mar 2005, 04:59 PM

The facial data used for the descendents has an instance id of 1. The one used for the actual appearance has an instance id of 2 (if the sim has used the plastic surgery kit). If you copy the second record over the first, you should be able to do effectively pass on the facial structure you modified at the plastic surgery kit.
Very cool! Even though most are butt ugly, I like playing Maxis families. I can always put up with the first generation of uglies, but after that, I begin to think of murder.

And another thing... is everybody's game the same where 95% of all townies and Maxis made Sims are all of ethnic backgrounds, or is it just my game?

Not that I have anything against ethnic backgrounds, but every so often it is nice not to be a minority in my own game. :D

MaxoidTom

23rd Mar 2005, 08:23 PM

Actually they don't get random hairs from a set of defaults, sims born in the game always get the same hairstyle. I think that is the main problem people have with it is that they always get that same hairstyle no matter what.

Now if you adopt a toddler or child then their hairstyle is randomized, giving variety. But when an infant, either born or adopted, grows up to a toddler there appears to be no random function for choosing a hairstyle or if there is then it has never worked.

The funny thing is, although there are several toddler hairstyles, you will never end up seeing them on your toddler sims unless you adopt or create toddlers in the CAS because it is not possible (without hacks) to change a toddler's hair.

Speaking of which, I wonder why the first patch fixed it so you could change the toddlers outfit but not their hairstyle. The interface certainly allows it because people have hacked mirrors to remove the restriction on toddlers and they work just fine.

I guess for me it's not a major issue but a minor annoyance since I do have a hacked mirror and can change the toddlers hairstyles. But IMHO I don't think we should have to resort to hacks to customize our toddlers appearance when all the other age groups can do it without hacks and I also think there really should be some randomness and variety among the toddlers hairstyles that get generated, or else where are there even multiple toddler hair meshes then?

Sims born in the game *should* get a random hairstyle from a set of defaults. Whether that set includes only one hairstyle, I am not sure. Random in this sense is determined by a seed when the game starts and generally makes it so that from run to run of the game (without a save), it gives out the same result.

For babies, there may actually be only one hairstyle marked as default, which belongs to the "curly" hairstyle family. When a sim ages, their hairstyle tries to stay consistent with what it was in the previous age (so teens with mohawks grow up to be adults with mohawks). If there was only one valid baby hairstyle and it designated the curly hairstyle as the next one in the same hairstyle family/group, then that is what you are probably seeing. One way to get around this is to find & modify or add more default baby hairstyles that have the same family id as the toddler hairstyle you want.

The first patch fixed the fact that you could not plan clothes on a toddler because that was a bug that was quickly brought up by the community. I do not believe the issue with not being able to change the appearance (hairstyle, makeup, etc.) of the toddler at the mirror/vanity was brought up as quickly. It may have been designed that way and did not take into account the fact that users wanted to put makeup on their toddlers, change their hairstyle, etc., or we just didn't have time to put in a good animation for having an adult bring the toddler to the mirror (and now vanity) and perform that interaction. Perhaps you could bring this up--I believe there is a new bug submission form on the official BBS.

MaxoidTom

23rd Mar 2005, 08:31 PM

MaxoidTom. Of course I know not everybody plays the way I do. That's why I mean the game self should have options. Instead we gather tons of mods, possibility of conflicts without any "money-back" garantie (this is just a black joke). I have many computers so I can install different versions for comparison. I used my "dead install" (never plays) to recover some "accidents" and just realize that without any mod (at least for me) the game works perfectly but is not playable (it sucks!). No personal offense. I always say MY meanings. I'm not a world representative.

I realize you may want lots of these options, but we simply do not have the time or resources to indulge all the options and configurability users may want. Can you imagine the list of options opened being included in the game that the modders have hacked in? Well, here's a few:

1.) control visitors on/off
2.) plastic surgery kit modifies genetic facial data on/off
3.) new young adult walk on/off
4.) teen woohoo on/off (which will probably never happen because the game is T-rated)
5.) teen pregnancy on/off (see #4)
6.) kids cheer for A+ on/off
7.) incest on/off (see #4 and #5)
etc.

We do try to make the game configurable as much as we can, but can you imagine a novice user looking at all those options and not getting confused?

But that's the beauty of the Sims 2. It is a sandbox that people do whatever they want in. However, we cannot account for all the possible ways people play the game. That's one of the reasons we support the modding community here--they enable users to do things that we did not have time to do or were not allowed to do or even did not even think of doing.

Danton

23rd Mar 2005, 08:41 PM

MaxoidTom

23rd Mar 2005, 08:49 PM

I never got the plastic surgery kit yet, but a "modifies genetic facial data on/off" should be available at the testingcheatsenabled cheat. Pity if not.

But if not, I bet one of the next SimPE releases will do the trick.

This is not currently an option and there are no plans to do so (sorry, I'm already swamped with work). You will have to use 3rd party tools if you wish to do this. I believe I have given out enough information where this will be trivial to do.

roxxy

23rd Mar 2005, 11:29 PM

The facial data used for the descendents has an instance id of 1. The one used for the actual appearance has an instance id of 2 (if the sim has used the plastic surgery kit). If you copy the second record over the first, you should be able to do effectively pass on the facial structure you modified at the plastic surgery kit.

Everyone here has been extremely helpful in my better understanding the Sims DNA structure and how to change things in SimPE, so I wanted to say thanks.

But this little bit of information I quoted from MaxoidTom was just the best for me. He's a wealth of time saving information (naturally).

sheera

24th Mar 2005, 01:31 AM

Okay -- not to intrude, but I was hoping somebody can sum up the rest of this mystery with some conclusive information and form an abridgment for the rest of these inclusively accounted lines...

Looks like we've got the facial structure and lines 2,4,7 and 10 *well* accounted for, thanks to MaxoidTom, RGiles, IgnorantBliss (and others).

I am really hoping that it can be made clear for the rest of these lines what is the genes, how they’re used, and what is expressed.

For what is not expressed (DNA only) in these lines, where can it be clearly and conclusively pointed out the rest of the expressed information that would directly affect the Sims appearance in game? Would it be somewhere else in the Neighborhood package, or somewhere in the User file? If so, where in?

Of course, using a hex editor to find and replace wouldn’t exactly form some exacts and determining factors which both would help form a tangible referential on this topic.

Okay, anybody care to confirm or expound on what RG came up with for the rest?

Line 1 -> Dominate gene for hair?
Line 3 -> Recessive hair color?
Line 5 -> Recessive eye color?
Line 6 -> ????? Depreciated? Why is this blank?
Line 8 -> Dominate eye genes?
Line 9 -> List of facial features? For what?

sh-

IgnorantBliss

24th Mar 2005, 04:40 AM

Line 1 -> Dominate gene for hair?
Line 3 -> Recessive hair color?
Line 5 -> Recessive eye color?
Line 6 -> ????? Depreciated? Why is this blank?
Line 8 -> Dominate eye genes?
Line 9 -> List of facial features? For what?

sh-

I think the list of facial features is to point out which parts of the sim's face are labelled dominant and more likely to be passed on to offspring. They have five areas of the face that are inherited separately.

simdebster

24th Mar 2005, 07:30 AM

The facial data used for the descendents has an instance id of 1. The one used for the actual appearance has an instance id of 2 (if the sim has used the plastic surgery kit). If you copy the second record over the first, you should be able to do effectively pass on the facial structure you modified at the plastic surgery kit.

MaxoidTom, Just dropped in and wanted to say thank you for the information and replying. It is great to know that there are people at Maxis that take time out to help the modding community. Just wanted you to know that it is appreciated by many here. By the way, Maxis blew me away with Sims2. I really was not expecting it to be much more than a redone Sims1. Great Job! I totally love it (except for the few things that need tweaked LOL)!

silentwarrior202

1st Apr 2005, 02:43 AM

Can any one tell me how to you copy the second facial data record over the first facial data in SimPE? I know where to find it. I just dont know how to copy the data over. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Grapholina

21st Apr 2005, 12:45 PM

Line 11 changes the skin tone in the game. Last night while testing I changed Oberon Summerdream's skin tone from dark to light. Went back into the game and he was a 1 instead of a 4.

mosbyte

21st Apr 2005, 01:42 PM

After reading Maxoidtom's post regarding the two slots now used to store facial structure information, I've been looking around and it appears SimPE isn't yet capable of managing this new data. Under the filetype SimDNA (neighborhood package) I see nothing similar to what Maxoidtom described, likewise with the Facial Structure filetype of the character package. For months I've been successfully extracting facial information off sims already in the game, manipulating with Body Shop and re-applying mostly because of the added capabilities of Body Shop. Like Rgiles mentioned, these chages were permament and passed on to offspring, but only prior to the EP, since Maxis apparently moved this slot (instance) to become the cosmetic change. Silentwarrior, where exactly in SimPE are you looking at for this new data? If you can find it I can tell you how to change it.

RGiles

28th Apr 2005, 09:44 AM

mosbyte,
In case you haven't found it already, there's a tutorial (in the tutorials forum) explaining how to overwrite that facial structure data Tom's talking about. It's not in the DNA file.

Tom,
Motoki's right. If the hairstyle for a sim born in-game is randomized from a set of defaults, the "set" consists of one style for males and one style for females. If there is a randomizing process, it has no options. Since other sims generated in-game (by the game, not the user) do get a variety of hair styles, I'm guessing that they are actually getting a random style from a set of defaults, and that the randomizing process was mistakenly left out at the time that an infant ages into a toddler. There's no other way I can think of to explain it. There would be only one set of default hairstyles. It's an oopsie. ;)

RG

mosbyte

29th Apr 2005, 12:45 AM

Thanks Admin, I knew of that tutorial post but never read it cause the title misled me! The whole thing is clear now, what it really boils down to is that facial structures still aren't related to sim DNA at all, and anyone (like myself) modding faces by extracting the data and manipulating it with Body Shop (the hard, but true way) is actually making hereditary changes 'cause there will still be ONE instance for facial structure, which explains why I couldn't find it before, and also explains your previous statement. There's no automatic creation of a 2nd instance of facial structure just by installing the EP, it will be created only by using the Cosmetic Surgeon Career Award which I've never used, and never will.

RGiles

29th Apr 2005, 02:12 AM

Yep, mosbyte. It's entirely related to cosmetic surgery object, which has a pretty limited ability to modify facial structure. It's sort of nifty that it's there, but like you I prefer the old-fashioned way. There are more options.

Ancient Sim

1st May 2005, 03:41 AM

The problem I have with male toddlers all getting an afro hairdo is that I have no idea if they are meant to have afro hair - in other words, if they happen to have a parent with afro hair, how do I know whether they have afro hair because all male toddlers get afro hair, or because they have inherited it from their afro-haired parent? By the same token, a girl with an afro-haired parent will never inherit afro hair because all girls get the same hairdo as toddlers, too. It seems the game doesn't view hair texture/type genetically in the way it does hair colour, which is a little strange.

Motoki

1st May 2005, 03:59 AM

RG: I think based on what Tom said that it works like this.

(these numbers are not accurate, just examples)

Infants have only one hair to choose from
Toddlers have 4
Children 8
Teens 12
Adults, Elders and YA's 20.

Each hairstyle will lead to a specific one in the next age range, but obviously since each age range has progressively more hairstyles, there are some that have no corresponding hair from the previous age range.

If there's only one infant hair, then any sim generated as an infant will only get that hair, but a sim generated as another age has more choices.

So if we could find a way to make more hairs enabled for infants (even if they are bald and look the same in the game) we could get randomized hairs. Assuming of course the random function for infants does work as Tom said.

An interesting thing to note, when I had the Starter Pack for the pre-release bodyshop in my downloads directory, the boys born in the game actually ended up with a different hair as a toddler, but then all boys got that different hair until I took that file out of my downloads directory.

RGiles

1st May 2005, 04:11 AM

Motoki, I'm pretty sure infants don't *have* a hair, even a bald hair overlay. Infants aren't sims. They are "accessories". I don't think they have a hair slot in their 3DIR file. I'll make one to check, though.

EDIT: Nope, I'm wrong. They do indeed have a hair slot. So that's something to look into.

Motoki

1st May 2005, 04:23 AM

Hmm, okay well let me know. If not there goes that theory. :p And I'm not really sure then how to randomize the hair. I know toddlers who are adopted get randomized hair, but apparently the function that's generating a toddler from growing up an infant isn't randomizing. But the adopted kids are completely random where as the ones that are infants I believe do already have a set of parameters stored in their character file.

*edit: Hmm, okay so that may be the issue. But then how do we add an infant hair to an existing hair? Apparently, only the short male fro and the female 'Meg' hair have it. And one style that's in the Starter pack with the pr-release bodyshop. Hmm.

I actually have gotten infants in the body shop btw. They look really funny though lol. If you export one via Sim Surgery in SimPE it will show up in the body shop. I haven't tried messing with its hair to make a new one though. I'm not even sure it would let you. I suspect it's some advanced technique that would have to be done via adding settings to a hair package in SimPE.

RGiles

1st May 2005, 04:27 AM

Thing is, if we made more hair options for the infant, say for instance we made one hair option for each of the 4 toddler hair "families"... would they randomize on infants born in the game? I guess the way to find out is to try it, but I do not have the entergy right now to create a sim breeding factory. :D I'll look at it later if no one else has.

Motoki

1st May 2005, 04:28 AM

LOL yes that's just it. We don't know for sure it would randomize even if we had more infant hairs that corresponded to the different toddler ones. It's only a theory based on what Tom said. :)

dino

1st May 2005, 05:15 AM

GPGiles I reckon that it will be not worth the code to randomize hairstyles during infants are born, in this case than the has to apply a some sort of hairstyle randomisation for each of the sim's life transitions as well.
For maxiodtom, is it possible for the sims to gradually age (visually) in this generation of the sims franchise.

RGiles

1st May 2005, 05:50 AM

dino, it depends entirely on whether the randomization code already exists. I am assuming (maybe incorrectly) that adding a second infant default "hairstyle" in the same family as one of the existing toddler hairstyles will be a piece of cake. If it is, then it's just a matter of testing to see whether the randomization happens, which means breeding and aging infants. It's worth a try. We've already got the toddler mirrors, so it's not that big a deal if it doesn't fly. But it would be nice to see this happen naturally.

If nothing else it tells me I can change the family of the existing infant hair to create a new default since I just hate that curly male toddler hair desperately. ;)

Motoki

1st May 2005, 01:21 PM

You definitely can create a new default. If you get the bodyshop starter pack here:

http://www.fileplanet.com/140517/140000/fileinfo/The-Sims-2-Body-Shop-Starter-Kit-

The boys will have a toddler hair that looks similar to the ones the girl toddlers get, then that turns into the short side parted hair from the child stage on.

Of course, putting that file in your downloads directory also gives you those messed up infants with the little faces all over their head. :p

Tasogareus

2nd May 2005, 11:50 PM

A question, RGiles; did you happen to look at Alien sim DNA? (Eh, you probably did, considering you have the codes for them..) I'm looking at a man-made sim from bodyshop. It's a very weird combination, and I'm wondering if I should make an experimental version and change them to see what happens. Here:

Line 1: 6 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46

This is supposed to be hair colour, but it looks like it's the skin color.

Line 2: 268435462 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46

Skin Tone

Line 3: 2 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46

This is again supposed to be a hair colour.

Line 4: 268435458 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46

Recessive skin tone

Line 5: 1 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

wow; apparently my sim has a recessive eye color of.. a light skin color. O_o

Line 6: 268435457 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

This is where I wanted to ask a question. I've checked all of my (man made) aliens, and they all have this. It's really weird. Isn't there supposed to be nothing there?

Line 7: 3 (dtString) = 12d4f3e1-fdbe-4fe7-ace3-46dd9ff52b51

alien eyes.

Line 8: 268435459 (dtString) = 12d4f3e1-fdbe-4fe7-ace3-46dd9ff52b51

again, alien eyes

Line 9: 5 (dtString) = mouth,cheek,eyes,ears,

what they'll pass on...

Line 10:268435461 (dtString) =

and nothing on line ten. I'm willing to bet you looked at more sims' DNA than I did, and maybe this is the hair problem I have in looking at this sim in bodyshop. should I change the lines that look weird to the way they should be, and give her black hair? *rubs hands together* I guess I should just experiment, first. What do you think? *scratches head*

Sims2Star

2nd May 2005, 11:54 PM

This is great info. :)

IgnorantBliss

3rd May 2005, 06:03 AM

Magnamundian

12th May 2005, 09:17 PM

I've seen at least some of these lines in the DNA of bodyless sims... does this mean it might be possible to transplant the faces of the maxis created dead sims to new bodies???

circebeaker

1st Jun 2005, 02:01 PM

RGiles

1st Jun 2005, 07:46 PM

Yeah, the order of the lines seems to be all over the place now. :) I'm not exactly sure what's what until I stare at it for a long time and compare it to the Sim's appearance and heritage. It would really be nice to have it labeled. But it's great that now SimSurgery (in SimPE) does update these values.

Magnamundian, nope, because these lines don't give any information about the shape of the face. They are only about hair, skin and eye color. The trouble with the "bodyless" sims is that there is no information stored about their facial features, so not enough information to rebuild them.

Ovenhole

2nd Jun 2005, 03:16 PM

About this strange negative skintone number in line 7 you mentioned earlier ... I've just had some strange experience with it.
Erin Single was pregnant and gave birth to a very dark-skinned child. Since the father was Nervus Subject with a changed DNA to match hers, I was sort of confused, quit without saving and checked him. No mistake made, his DNA was just as I had wanted it. I then checked Erin to see if she had any recessive traits and found out she had a negative number in line 7. I changed it to light skin tone, went back and the baby was light-skinned.
Seems this line can create some havock.

fwiffo

3rd Jun 2005, 02:00 AM

I just checked all four of Singles ladies DNA - they all have weird negative numbers. Weren't Chloe and Lola (the two alien ones - actually part of the Polli Tech #9 Smith family tree) frequently implicated in the old birth crash bug? That bug was fixed with the patch and I didn't have the game before then, so I don't know from personal experience that that's the case...

Ovenhole

3rd Jun 2005, 12:25 PM

What's this birth crash bug?
Chloe moved out and had a baby with some Townie, Lola got abducted and had an alien girl (Hack). No problems during birth and my game is unpatched.

Jaedle

5th Jun 2005, 02:02 PM

Does the DNA line order change cause problems for babies of Sims you made prior to installing Uni? I have some earlier houses I haven't played since upgrading and one baby is on the way.

fwiffo

5th Jun 2005, 02:57 PM

The birth crash bug was intermittent - sometimes if it happened you could reload and it would be fine.

The line order change will not be a problem. Each line is prefixed with a number that says what it's for, and that's how the game looks them up (the game doesn't actually care about the order.)

IgnorantBliss

6th Jun 2005, 11:37 AM

The order of the lines got switched around for some of my sims that were born in game, but the skin genes seem to be prefixed by:

6 (dtString) = ParentSkinGene
268435462 (dtString) = ParentSkinGene
2 (dtString) = ParentSkinGene
268435458 (dtString) = ParentSkinGene

By "ParentSkinGene" do you mean the skintone genes the sim inherited from his parents? Based on my experience (as posted earlier), the first two lines seem to indicate the expressed skintone and also the skintone they will pass on to their offspring (with the basic four Maxis skintones, these are always the same thing), and the third and fourth lines are what the sim inherited from his parents.

fwiffo

8th Jun 2005, 09:50 PM

A couple questions...

1. Do we know how the "dominant facial features" line works? How is it generated when you create a new sim? Is it just random? Is that line itself heritable, or does it just get generated anew when a sim is born?

2. Is there any way to access (read) or modify (write) any part of any of a sim's heritable features (facial structure or DNA) from BHAVs?

3. Apparently, when a baby's facial features are being generated, some sort of "neutral" default face is thrown in the mix. Is this face stored anywhere accessable, or is it just some hard-coded parameters somewhere?

4. Do we have any idea what facial information is used when a parent sim has no facial structure information (e.g. the RC car or Grim)?

5. Do we know much of anything about what the faceblendlimits cheat really does?

IgnorantBliss

9th Jun 2005, 09:18 AM

A couple questions...

1. Do we know how the "dominant facial features" line works? How is it generated when you create a new sim? Is it just random? Is that line itself heritable, or does it just get generated anew when a sim is born?

5. Do we know much of anything about what the faceblendlimits cheat really does?

1. When you create a sim in CAS, different facial features are randomly labelled dominant. Men are slightly more likely to have a dominant nose, for example, while women have a bigger chance of getting dominant eyes. (Some of these are listed in the guide, but not all.) When they then have kids, either parent can pass each facial feature, but the dominant ones are more likely to be passed (my understanding is that with facial features, the kids only get one gene from one parent, unlike with eye color where they get two genes of which only one is expressed). If the father passes on his dominant nose to his daughter, then the daughter's nose will also be labelled dominant and more likely to be passed on to her offspring. So, with sims that are born in game, a woman is as likely to have a dominant nose than a man is.

This is my understanding of how it works, I might be wrong.

5. I think that with the faceblendlimits cheat you can turn off the softening feature which makes children' facial features less prominent when compared to adults so that they look more "childish". This also makes all kids more similar looking as compared to adults who have more striking, individual features.

RGiles

10th Jun 2005, 09:57 AM

2. Is there any way to access (read) or modify (write) any part of any of a sim's heritable features (facial structure or DNA) from BHAVs?
I'm not certain, but I think the answer is no.

4. Do we have any idea what facial information is used when a parent sim has no facial structure information (e.g. the RC car or Grim)?I'd bet that Grim has a facial structure in objects.package, but I've never looked.

fwiffo

10th Jun 2005, 03:07 PM

I've looked. There are three facial structure thingies in objects.package belonging to "Hula Zombie", "Therapist Therapist" and "Pollination Technician". There are none for "*NPC - Remote Control Car" or "Grim Reaper", yet both can successfully "father" kids with faces.

They clearly have DNA, because they pass traits like hair, eye and skin color on to their kids, and you can use the SimDNA cheat to view it (though it looks like Grim's DNA might not be the same every time.) And their offspring do get their facial structure from somewhere, because they don't look like clones of the "mother".

MaxoidTom

14th Jun 2005, 04:35 AM

There's fallback code to return default DNA if some isn't found. This is true for unique NPCs like the Grim Reaper and such.

fwiffo

14th Jun 2005, 05:10 AM

Thanks you for your response, MaxoidTom.

Is that true for the facial structure data as well? If so, is it possible to extract that information (in other words - to create a sim with the "default" face)?

DumbutCleverSimGirl

16th Jun 2005, 04:34 PM

Hello.
Can you please tell me how to make your own skins, hair colour, make up, and eye colour? That is if you know.
PLEASE!!!!
DbCSG
(DumbutCleverSimGirl) :confused:

miketaba

16th Jun 2005, 04:51 PM

DBCSG, to make skin colours, hair colours, makeups and eye colours, you have to use Bodyshop. It comes with the game and there are tutorials online.

genny6368

23rd Jun 2005, 01:14 AM

Hi ummm can u help me with a problem I have I can not figure out how to change the eye color during the game... Like I can change the hair color np but I cannot figure out the eye tysm...

fwiffo

23rd Jun 2005, 01:39 AM

There isn't an in-game mechanism to change eye color of an existing sim. It can be done a couple different ways with SimPE.

moonluck9

23rd Jun 2005, 02:17 AM

You could use contacts that people make that are in full face makeup.

IgnorantBliss

23rd Jun 2005, 05:56 PM

A lot earlier in this thread there was talk about the alien genetics, and how the alien skintone works the same way as a custom skintone. Actually, it doesn't, since the green skintone can be recessive to other Maxis skintones, while custom skintones apparently are always dominant over them. A sim can inherit the alien skintone from a parent, but still express one of the four regular Maxis skintones that he got from the other parent. He may then pass on the green skintone to later generations.

Elsewhere there has also been some talk about how all the babies' facial structure is the same until they grow up into toddlers, but that doesn't seem to be true, either. When a child has some extreme features such as a flat nose, you can already see it when he's just a baby. When a baby has more average features, the softening of the facial features for babies usually makes it look like they are all the same, but the individual features are already there, just harder to notice.

fwiffo

23rd Jun 2005, 07:46 PM

IgnorantBliss - I've done some pretty extensive testing with the alien skintone and found it to NEVER be recessive to the other maxis skintones. A CAS sim with alien skin and a CAS sim with standard maxis tones results in a green child 100% of the time in my game. The only exception was in the case of a few sims in Strangetown that have messed up DNA (Lola and Chloe Singles).

IgnorantBliss

23rd Jun 2005, 08:19 PM

I just had a baby born to a male sim who was the result of an alien abduction, and a "normal" female (S4). The child expresses S4, but also has the gene for the alien skintone when I look at his DNA in SimPE. There are no custom skintones involved. I'm also not the only one who's come to this conclusion: A fellow simmer has had a recessive green skintone gene span four generations. Whether it's supposed to work like this or not, I'm positive about the results in this case.

This is what the baby's skintone DNA looks like:

6 = 00000004-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435462 = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46
2 = 00000004-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435458 = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46

And he expresses skintone 4.

fwiffo

23rd Jun 2005, 08:51 PM

freoninferno

23rd Jun 2005, 08:51 PM

i find i get better results with CAS sims who have been abducted when their successive generations spawn themselves if i use the multi-pollination technician mod found on this site. there are 4 techs available, thus availing the gene pool of a greater diversity. one of those is always the default tech, or one that you have put in place to assume that default, such as the better pollination tech mod... works harmoniously with this multi mod. the other 3 provided have otherr, including natural skin tones, round or pointy ears, bald or heads full of hair. A CAS sim that has been abducted doesn't always have green green children, that is lessened by 1/2. and that sim, if abducted later, will never be pollinated by it's relative, thus keeping the gene pool diverse. and if said sim isn't abducted, but just has a normal childbirth with another CAS sim, the reoccurance of that sims skin color is lessened by 1/2 as well.

in my game, i use a natural skintoned, pointy eared full head of hair tech, much like a vulcan. then i use the better tech. my third is a pointy eared lavender tech. the fourth is the 'I Robot' skin. needless to say, i am pleased with my sim gene pool within alien DNA contexts, and if & when i feel it may be to homogenious, i swap these skins for others, like the Terminator skin, a blue skin, indigo, whatever....

IgnorantBliss

23rd Jun 2005, 09:03 PM

This alien male is my first ever alien sim, and has had three kids with the same female sim recently. I've been running a Groundhog Day type of scenario with all the births, repeating them without saving until I got the desired result. The baby has been green much less often than some other skintone (the alien dad's other skintone gene is S2, so the babies have been S2, S3, S4 or green). I'd say barely 25% of the births have resulted in a green baby, so that also speaks against green being dominant. S4 has definitely been the most commonly expressed skintone, but I of course didn't get to see the DNA of those babies that weren't saved. That it was clearly more common than S2 than S3, though, hints that in many of those cases the baby had a recessive green skintone. And then I finally got proof to my suspicions when I finally saved this one dark-skinned baby (I figured the chance of a recessive green skintone was 50% when his skin was dark).

I don't know if it makes any sense, but maybe it somehow matters if one of the parents is "fully green", like a CAS created alien, or born through abduction and only 50% alien genetically, then. I don't know how that would work, though.

MaxoidTom

23rd Jun 2005, 09:12 PM

That is very strange. I've done a LOT of tests while working on my multi pollination technician hack, and never once have I had that result. Now, the testing family I've been using most of the time (the "Victim" family, with "Hapless", "Tragic" and "Innocent", random CAS sims) doesn't happen to have any with S4 skintone. Perhaps only some of the maxis tones can do that?

I believe MaxoidTom said that Alien was supposed to be equally dominant with custom skins, which are dominant over regular skins. That's clearly not the case in your example though.

On the other hand, I've never gotten a green baby from Chole or Lola singles, even after substantial testing, because of their screwy DNA, but others have.

I almost think there are different builds of the game out there with subtly different genetics rules.

There are some special cases for sims with the same skintone in both their genes and if the genetic value of the skintone is marked as custom content (i.e. zero). It is definitely possible for the alien skintone to be recessive though, but it doesn't seem like it should in the test case listed. It'll be hard to determine, since there may be hacked data that overrides the genetic value for the normal Maxis skintones or the Alien skintone.

IgnorantBliss

23rd Jun 2005, 09:48 PM

There are some special cases for sims with the same skintone in both their genes and if the genetic value of the skintone is marked as custom content (i.e. zero). It is definitely possible for the alien skintone to be recessive though, but it doesn't seem like it should in the test case listed. It'll be hard to determine, since there may be hacked data that overrides the genetic value for the normal Maxis skintones or the Alien skintone.

What kind of hacked data are we talking about?
What would be a case where the alien skintone could possibly be recessive?

fwiffo

23rd Jun 2005, 10:26 PM

Scientific method to the rescue!

I've just done a bunch of testing, and I think I found the solution. I created a CAS alien sim, and a CAS S4 skinned sim. I had them have children together, and every single time, the child had alien skin. The DNA was always the same, because CAS sims are homozygous for all their traits. I producted 14 babies this way to be sure. If alien skin were equally dominant with the human skins, the odds of that occuring by chance (and I was careful to avoid the firstborn effect) would have been 1:16,384.

However, you clearly had a skin with an alien gene and a S4 gene express S4. So, to continue the experiment, I bred one of the new kids to another CAS sim with S4 skin. I was able to produce the results you see. I got babies with normal skin that had two normal skin genes, as would be expected. I also got babies with both alien and normal genes, some expressing alien skin, some not.

My conclusion: Alien skin is equally dominant with regular skintones, EXCEPT, if one parent is pure alien (homozygous for the alien skin gene), then the alien skin is always expressed. Probably this was done so that all babies produced by abduction would have alien skin (custom skins, obviously, throw a monkey wrench in this.) If the baby inherits its alien gene from a parent that is heterozygous, either the alien or the regular skintone could be expressed with equal odds.

This would be consistent with your experience, IgnorantBliss. The kids from your half-alien should express alien skin 25% of the time, on average. 50% of the time, he will pass on his S2 gene, which paired with the S4 gene will produce S2, S3 or S4. The other 50% of the time, he will pass on his alien gene. Since alien is equally dominant with the human skins, only half of that half (25%) would be alien, and the others would be S4. I'd expect you to get S2 and S3 each 1/6th of the time, S4 skin 5/12ths of the time and alien skin 1/4th of the time.

It would also be consitent with my earlier testing which produced alien skinned babies 100% of the time, but always had at least one pure alien parent.

(As a side note, a side effect during my testing was that I proved that alien eyes were equally dominant with brown and dark blue eyes).

IgnorantBliss

23rd Jun 2005, 10:40 PM

Scientific method to the rescue!

My conclusion: Alien skin is equally dominant with regular skintones, EXCEPT, if one parent is pure alien (homozygous for the alien skin gene), then the alien skin is always expressed. Probably this was done so that all babies produced by abduction would have alien skin (custom skins, obviously, throw a monkey wrench in this.) If the baby inherits its alien gene from a parent that is heterozygous, either the alien or the regular skintone could be expressed with equal odds.

(As a side note, a side effect during my testing was that I proved that alien eyes were equally dominant with brown and dark blue eyes).

That's cool, thanks for the effort you put into this! It does make sense. I thought there has to be something that makes the abduction babies always green even if the skintones can also be equally dominant.

The eye color discovery puzzles me now, though. During my experiments, the babies had brown eyes 100% of the time (from the mom). The mom is homozygous to brown eyes, the dad has a gene for green eyes but expresses black alien eyes. Based on that, brown always dominates black with eyes.

fwiffo

23rd Jun 2005, 11:40 PM

The genetics of alien eyes is weird too, but I'd figured that out a few days ago. Alien eyes can only be expressed on alien skin. If they are expressed on other skintones, they seem to show some sort of default for that skin. On the maxis human skins, that means brown. On some custom skins, it means other things. On the zombie skin, it means charcoal black. On the mannequin skin, it's a weird light gray color. On a couple robot skins I have, it shows the robot eyes that came with the robot skin.

If you mated your half-alien with a CAS sim with green, gray or blue eyes, some of the kids can still end up with something that looks like brown. If you look at their DNA, you'll see they are expressing the gene for alien eyes.

I have some default replacement eyes in my game (so that all the sims in my game have nice looking eyes instead of the maxis default textures), and when I had some kids with normal skin, but alien eyes, their eyes showed with the original maxis texture! Curiouser and curiouser!

The answer is that the alien eyes are transparent. If you look at the textures for a skin (the head part), they have eyes built in. The built in eyes for all the maxis human skins are the original maxis brown eyes. The built in eyes for the alien skin are the black alien eyes. The robot textures I have have the robot eyes built in, and the zombie skin has just solid black where the eyes would be in the texture. When a non-alien skinned sim gets alien eyes, that default texture shows through. You can test this in CAS. Go into debug mode so you can create a sim with alien skin and eyes. It won't let you select alien eyes if you don't have alien skin selected first... But you can change back to some other skin afterwards. If you do that, you'll see the default color (brown with the Maxis human skins).

So, it is possible for your example to get alien eyes, but they will be very rare.

75% of the time, the kid will have human skin. If it gets the green eyes from dad, and brown eyes from mom, the eyes will be brown. If it gets alien eyes from dad, and brown from mom, either could show up, but both will look brown. 25% of the time, the kid will have alien skin. Half of those times, the kid will get green eyes from Dad, and will display the brown eyes from mom. 1/8th of the time that the kid will get both alien skins, and an alien eye gene from Dad. But it's equally dominant with the brown eye from mom, so the alien eyes will only be visible on 1 out of 16 births. That's rare enough that it might not show up at all unless you do quite a few tests.

IgnorantBliss

24th Jun 2005, 07:15 AM

Wow, that's getting fairly sophisticated! Thanks for the explanation. I had no idea the alien genetics could be this complicated. I have probably repeated about 50-60 births for the family, so there is a good chance the 1/16 alien eyes just never showed up. That's kind of disappointing that they can only show with alien skin, though.

The third kid, the one with the recessive green skin, also has the gene for alien eyes even though he expresses brown. I guess there is a remote chance that if one of his future kids gets the green skin, then they might also have the black eyes.

J. M. Pescado

24th Jun 2005, 07:54 AM

Elsewhere there has also been some talk about how all the babies' facial structure is the same until they grow up into toddlers, but that doesn't seem to be true, either. When a child has some extreme features such as a flat nose, you can already see it when he's just a baby. When a baby has more average features, the softening of the facial features for babies usually makes it look like they are all the same, but the individual features are already there, just harder to notice.
I don't think that can possibly be true. I mean, if the children of Marduk the Flayer (http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2392) can appear normal until toddlerhood, there's definitely something very generic about babies.

Baskar

24th Jun 2005, 08:01 AM

And I thought Marduk was ugly...Oi! :P

IgnorantBliss

24th Jun 2005, 08:20 AM

I don't think that can possibly be true. I mean, if the children of Marduk the Flayer (http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2392) can appear normal until toddlerhood, there's definitely something very generic about babies.

Well, some of the features are clearly visible on babies, like the alien shaped eyes. Also the flat alien nose can show on a baby. I could clearly see it with my own eyes when I was repeating births for this one couple until I got the result I wanted. Maybe there is something different about my game as compared to yours, but it definitely happened in mine.

Who knows, maybe this applies only to certain parts of the face, or maybe there is something different about alien features. But, for certain I can say that the alien eye and nose shapes can manifest on second generation abduction babies (born to sims who were born from abduction pregnancies).

jagerjmr

24th Jun 2005, 09:04 AM

Don't know if anyone's interested, but I've got a website dealing with Sim genetic inheritance at: http://www.joodiff.com/simgen01.htm
At the moment I'm running a much bigger genetic experiment than any of my previous ones, but even so, I don't expect the findings to be much different. In a nutshell, I've found that custom skins can completely disappear in 4 generations or less, and the Maxis alien skin even faster. Custom eyes seem to have far more "staying power" than custom skins.
It's worth remembering that in genetic terms "dominant" isn't as all-overpowering as it sounds; recessive traits can stack up until they overcome dominant traits.

- Jager :howdy:

IgnorantBliss

24th Jun 2005, 09:12 AM

Yes, I think we're using the word "dominant" for two different things here: For genetic traits that are always dominant over certain other ones (like brown eyes over green eyes) and also for certain traits expressing (if we have two traits that are recessive in the first example, then one of them may express dominantly over the other, like green eyes over gray ones). Yet the traits in the second example will always be recessive to traits mentioned in the first example. It's a bit confusing sometimes.

jagerjmr

24th Jun 2005, 10:42 AM

Yes, I think we're using the word "dominant" for two different things here: For genetic traits that are always dominant over certain other ones (like brown eyes over green eyes).

Further to the above: correct, brown eyes will always dominate over green in an example where both parents are homozygous (because brown is a dominant trait).
However, if you had an example where father Sim was brown eyed with parents with brown/green eyes, say, and mother Sim was green eyed with parents with green/green eyes, then the recessive green eyed trait might express in the children - even though the "dominant" brown eyes are present in the child's genetic inheritance. "Dominance" should, therefore, be viewed as a measure of what will express in certain circumstances, rather than a sort of "this trait will always win against anything recessive" term.
Genetics can be, as IgnorantBliss says, confusing sometimes! :howdy:

IgnorantBliss

24th Jun 2005, 10:48 AM

Further to the above: correct, brown eyes will always dominate over green in an example where both parents are homozygous (because brown is a dominant trait).
However, if you had an example where father Sim was brown eyed with parents with brown/green eyes, say, and mother Sim was green eyed with parents with green/green eyes, then the recessive green eyed trait might express in the children - even though the "dominant" brown eyes are present in the child's genetic inheritance. "Dominance" should, therefore, be viewed as a measure of what will express in certain circumstances, rather than a sort of "this trait will always win against anything recessive" term.
Genetics can be, as IgnorantBliss says, confusing sometimes! :howdy:

I've never seen recessive eye color dominate over something like brown if the child actually inherited both green and brown from his parents. In these cases, have you looked at the child DNA in SimPE, for example? In that case, the child might have two green eye color genes and none brown.

IgnorantBliss

24th Jun 2005, 10:55 AM

Regarding the earlier discussion about babies' facial features, here is some photographic evidence:

Both babies were born from the same parents where the father is an alien born from an abduction pregnancy and mother is a "normal" sim.

This baby has "normally" shaped eyes, a regular nose and full lips:
http://www.thirdnipples.com/helena/images/sims/TestBaby1a.jpg

This baby clearly already expresses alien-shaped eyes, a flat nose and narrow lips. Also the rest of his facial structure looks slightly different around the cheeks/jaw:
http://www.thirdnipples.com/helena/images/sims/TestBaby2a.jpg

jagerjmr

24th Jun 2005, 11:04 AM

I've never seen recessive eye color dominate over something like brown if the child actually inherited both green and brown from his parents. In these cases, have you looked at the child DNA in SimPE, for example? In that case, the child might have two green eye color genes and none brown.

I have to admit to not having a look using SimPE, but I have had this happen several times during the many S2 genetic experiments I was running to get data for my site - but only in cases where I was deliberately creating a strong recessive inheritance to breed to a fairly weak dominant inheritance (i.e., a "recessive Sim" with three or four generations of purely recessive traits bred to a "dominant trait" Sim who has at least 50% recessive traits lurking in their ancestry).
I have always assumed (maybe wrongly) that as you increase the generations and Sim genes stack up, in some cases dominant traits can simply lose out to the massed hordes of recessive traits.
Originally, I simply wanted to be able to predict the fate of my custom content over the generations, then I wanted to see how closely S2 genetics mirrored "real" genetics. Now I'm sadly obsessed with Sim-genetic engineering...! :D

IgnorantBliss

24th Jun 2005, 11:12 AM

As far as I know, the genes do not stack up. Every sim only has two genes for eye color. If one dominant eye color, like brown, is present, then it dominates over any recessive traits. A sim with genes for green/brown may only express brown. If a sim has two dominant genes, like brown and dark blue, then he may express either one. The same with two recessive genes: they have an equal chance at expressing.

If you have parents where one is brown/green by genes, and the other one green/green, then their kids can be either brown/green (brown expressed) or green/green (green expressed). They have a 50% chance of having a green-eyed child. If one parent is brown/brown and the other green/green, all of their kids will express the brown eye color, even though all of them do have a green eye color hiding in their genome, and they can pass that on to their kids.

IgnorantBliss

24th Jun 2005, 12:40 PM

I did some further testing on the baby face thing by creating a couple with grotesque noses. Their babies were born with normal looking noses. Maybe the facial features only manifest on babies when they are of alien origin, then. The interesting thing is that, with aliens born from abductions, I don't think you can see their real nose shape until they turn into toddlers (but you can see the alien eye shape). So, only second generation abduction babies can manifest these features then. Odd. I drew a conclusion too fast thinking it's the same for all babies.

fwiffo

24th Jun 2005, 02:25 PM

@jagerjmr: I think you misunderstand what "dominant" and "recessive" mean in the context of genetics. In your example, the baby would have green eyes because they didn't inherit any copies of the brown eye gene at all. One parent had one brown and one green gene and passed on the green one, the other had two copies of green and passed one of them on. If you use the simdna cheat, or look at his genetics in SimPE, you'll see that the green-eyed kid will not have any copies of the brown-eye gene. Genetics in the sims is based on mendellian genetics (which is a very simplified model of real-life genetics, but powerful enough that animal and plant breeders use it daily). You may want to google for that or "punnett's square" for a complete explanation on how it works.

-----

As far as custom skins - as far as I know, they are dominant over standard skintones, and equally dominant with alien skin when only the alien and custom skin are present. However, it is quite possible that they have the same inheritance rules as alien skin, where they're only dominant over Maxis human skins when one parent is homozygous for the custom gene. I'll create a sim that has custom skin het. for human skin and breed it with a homozygous human sim to see if I ever get any children that carry the custom gene but express the human skintone.

I did some experiments with custom hair last night and found that it works like custom eyes. Custom hair is super-dominant. However, because each hairstyle you do in Body Shop is only for one sex, and each gets their own custom genetic identifier, if the child born is of the opposite sex of the one with the custom hair, they will express the gene they get from the other parent. Fortunately, it was a completely trivial operation in SimPE to copy the genetic identifier from one sex's hairstyle package to the other. Doing that worked exactly as expected. Either parent could have the custom hair color I made, with the second parent having any one of the standard colors, and all of their kids of both sexes would always have the custom color.

-----

@IgnorantBliss: There is an entry in each Sim's DNA that specifies which of their facial regions will act as dominant when the facial structures are blended. Note: this is different than the deprecated "facial structure" line. You can view it in SimPE or with the simDNA cheat. If the alien dad has "eyes" listed in the "dominant facial regions" line, and the mother does not, the kids will always get something closer to the big alien eyes than their mother's eyes (obviously, not talking about color here). If it's the other way around (the mom has eyes listed, but the father does not), the kids will always have something closer to their mother's eyes. If neither have it listed, or both have it listed, the result will be closer to one or the other at random. It doesn't seem to ever try to pick the midpoint; the result is usually quite close to one parent or the other. So, you might look at a kid and go "Oh, she's got her mother's nose!", or "he's got his father's chin" or "she's got the mailman's eyes."

Which facial regions are chosen as dominant is decided randomly when a sim is created in CAS. You could create a sim twice from the same template, and this one line of their DNA would be different. Which facial regions they get as dominant is weighted somewhat based on sex (e.g. males are more likely to get a dominant brow while females are more likely to have a dominant mouth.) Babies born do inherit entries on this line, though the exact mechanism is unclear. As far as I know, all the possible regions are brow, eyes, ears, nose, cheeks, cheekbones, mouth and jaw. I've seen anywhere from two to six listed on any given sim, though I don't know if more or fewer are possible.

Pollination Technician seems to have dominant eyes, ears, cheekbones and nose at least. You can check by looking at his "unknown" entry in the neighborhood in SimPE (look it up by looking at the relations of any of your alien kids.) It is possible that it is different in each neighborhood. I know with my Multi-PT hack, that DNA line is chosen randomly when the technicians are first created by the game (it is not clear when this happens, but they do get an unknown entry in the neighborhood file just like the real PT). So each person using my hack could get wildly different results from the same technician. The same technician could pass on big eyes consistently in one neighborhood, but pointy ears instead in another.

Also, I have seen abduction babies have flat noses and tiny ears straight from birth, so it can show up in a baby. You can also tell if they will have big eyes, though it is much less obvious. I haven't been able to distinguish pointy from non-pointy ears until they reached toddlerhood. I also had a baby from the therapist that had some ugly features straight from birth (most obvious in chin and mouth area.) The poor toddler was sooo ugly, and he was even worse when he got to be a child. I almost euthanised him, but he eventually grew into his features somewhat - he became extremely homely in kind of an endearing instead of devestatingly ugly and deformed.

-----

I may try creating a set of default replacement skins that allow normal skinned sims to express the alien eyes. I'd like to see what they look like on a normal skintone. IgnorantBliss, you may want to download sugarandcaffiene's default replacement eyes (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=56315). With those you can see the effect I'm talking about with alien eyes on normal skin. If the kid is expressing brown eyes, it will show up as the nice looking replacements. If they're expressing alien eyes, they'll show up with the original Maxis textures.

IgnorantBliss

24th Jun 2005, 03:39 PM

Yeah, I'm familiar with the genetics of the facial regions, and it's an interesting subject. However, I disagree with one thing here: Even if one parent has a dominant eye shape and the other one not, their kids will not always get the dominant one. It's more like there is a 66% chance of any child inheriting the dominant region.

When I was talking about the strong alien features earlier, I meant maybe they are stronger than regular features in the way that you can see them on babies, while usually the facial features only manifest on toddlers and older. In that case I wasn't talking about the other kind of dominance about inheriting different facial regions.

A good example is the same sim family I talked about earlier. The father, who has the alien eye shape among other alien features, has his eyes listed as a dominant feature when you look at that line in SimPE. And more than half of their babies that I produced with my experiment did have that eye shape, but not all of them. Probably like 2/3 of the babies had the alien eyes, and the remaining 1/3 got their mom's eye shape, even though in her DNA eyes are not dominant. So, the 66% rule seems to work here.

fwiffo

24th Jun 2005, 04:58 PM

OK, you are probably right about that. Dominant, in the case of facial regions, just means that it's more likely to be inhereted, not guaranteed.

I think the fact that you can see them on babies is just that they're very extreme. Like, Pollination technician literally has no nose at all. Similarly with the therapist, he's got completely outrageous features, and they do show up a little bit on babies. But these are extreme cases. I can't imagine that all the babies look completely normal from the example that JM mentioned.

IgnorantBliss

24th Jun 2005, 10:01 PM

The baby face thing keeps confusing me now. I'd like to know exactly how it works. I would also like to know what kind of experiences other people have had with alien babies and their offspring, if the alien features are somehow special even in the second and third generations, or if it's just because they are so extreme in general.

Sonshine

3rd Jul 2005, 08:12 PM

I don't know about alien features. Most of my aliens from PT have inherited his lack of a nose and his eyes except for twins. In the case of twins, one displays the alien features and the other one looks normal.

fwiffo, you solved a puzzle for me. I have one family (Legacy) where the patriarch (made in CAS) had custom brown hair. He married a townie w/brown hair. Their oldest daughter (brown hair) married a townie who had blonde hair. Every male child since then has had brown hair, and every female child has had blonde hair! I could never figure it out til I read your post. Btw, their grandchildren so far display the same genetics (boy=brown, girl=blonde). His blonde hair must have been dominant over the brown for the girls.

If any of you haven't had any children by Nervous Subject, his eyes are extremely dominant. Every child that he has ever produced in my game has had his eyes except for one who was a twin. It'll be interesting to see what his grandchildren look like, lol. For twins each one seems to take his/her genetics from one parent. An example would be one twin would take on the mother's genetics and one would take on the father's genetics. Hence PT's twins where one had the huge, but human eyes and the other one was completely normal.

Baskar

7th Jul 2005, 09:46 AM

I haven't had the opportunity of having any children fathered by Nervous. I've only been able to have children with the female aliens so far. Maybe it's just my run of the mill. *shrugs*

Resender

7th Jul 2005, 02:44 PM

i got a toddler whose eye color i want to change from brown to green & hair i want to change from black to red

but i dont seem to find how can anyone give me a simple respons

Baskar

7th Jul 2005, 09:21 PM

I just wait till they're teens and then go and use a mirror. I could do it when they're children, but I like the wide variety of choices, plus their general facial structures are as close to adult as any.

fwiffo

10th Jul 2005, 03:25 AM

fwiffo, you solved a puzzle for me. I have one family (Legacy) where the patriarch (made in CAS) had custom brown hair. He married a townie w/brown hair. Their oldest daughter (brown hair) married a townie who had blonde hair. Every male child since then has had brown hair, and every female child has had blonde hair! I could never figure it out til I read your post. Btw, their grandchildren so far display the same genetics (boy=brown, girl=blonde). His blonde hair must have been dominant over the brown for the girls.

I think you misunderstand. Your custom brown hair should be dominant over all the maxis standard hair colors unless someone has manually modified the value for that in the .package file with SimPE. Since custom hairs, by default, are sex-linked (unless you create hairs for both genders and give them the same genetic ID instead of the unique ID created by Body Shop), the custom brown hair could only go to boys. However, his grandaughters in this case, though they could get the custom content brown gene, which is dominant over blond, but they cannot express that color because there isn't a female hair with that genetic ID, so they express the gene they get from their father (blond). The custom brown is still dominant though, and if they pass it on to their children, the boys could express it (and they are pretty likely to, since it is super-dominant, and they have a 50% chance of getting it if their mother is a carrier.) It is also possible for the grandaughters in this case to get maxis brown (since the eldest daughter should carry both maxis and your custom brown genes). The grandsons can only get either maxis brown or the custom brown, because both are dominant over blond.

i got a toddler whose eye color i want to change from brown to green & hair i want to change from black to red
You'll need to use Sim Surgery in SimPE. If you do a search you'll find a number of threads that describe the procedure.

kurtiford

11th Jul 2005, 10:54 PM

Puhleeeeeeeze! write up an explanation! & write as though you're writing to
an imbicile....cause you will be...me. I read and re-read your "Mysteries of DNA" post but I just can't figure out how to get @ the Sound File Mapping you refered to. Help me Obi Wan Kenobi! You're my only hope!

Sonshine

13th Jul 2005, 07:53 PM

kurtiford, if you d/l a new version of Simpe, it will say "Sim DNA" instead of "Sound Mapping." Can't get much simpler. Click on the Sim Description and find the sim you want to alter and write down the Instance #. Now Click on Sim DNA and find that same Instance # and click on it. Now click on the Plug In tab and you will see 10 strings of code. On the first page of this thread, they explain what each of the strings mean. If you want to change one of the strings, click on it to highlight it. Next, look on the right. In that window in the lower right under where it says "Value," you'll see the string that you have highlighted. Edit your string there in the "Value" window then click on "Commit" and then on File at the top and then save and then exit. I don't think your sim will look any diff, but his/her children will display the new genetics. If you want your sim to look diff, you have to use Sim Surgery for him/her.

Sonshine

13th Jul 2005, 09:36 PM

IgnorantBliss

14th Jul 2005, 04:43 AM

Well, I just played that neighborhood for a little bit. I also checked in Strangetown on Nervous Subject. First of all I got Nervous' wife preggers again w/the tombstone of L&D and the sped it up and then used boolprop tce to check the child's genetics. In spite of the fact that Nervous does NOT have eyes listed on that line of facial features that are thought to be dominant, he still passes on those dumb droopy eyes! lol In Veronaville where that other family is, both parents have a recessive gene of blonde hair. That might explain why their two daughters have blonde hair, but their sons still have brown hair. Again, both mother and father have brown hair w/a recessive of blonde. The father carries a dominant custom brown hair. However, it displays dark brown. His father (CAS) had custom LT brown hair, but his mother (a townie) had dark brown hair. I'll have one of the other Legacy sons marry a brown haired lady who is the product of two brown haired sims and we'll see what happens. I'm still thinking that the game doesn't have any instance of any females w/the custom hair color so, it gives them the recessive blonde. Also I took the "jaw" off of the facial features line and then had the wife get pregnant again. The child just grew into a toddler and she has very narrow (sucked in) cheeks. I'm wondering if there isn't somewhere else in the game that determines what facial features will be dominant. Until later, I'll keep experimenting.

That a facial feature is labelled dominant doesn't mean it'll always overrule a recessive one. If one parent has a dominant nose and the other one not, each child has something like a 66% chance of getting the dominant one, not 100%. If both parents have a dominant nose, then it's 50-50.

When you create a sim in CAS, different facial features are labelled dominant randomly, but male sims are more likely to have a dominant nose, while female sims are more likely to have dominant eyes (shape). They can pass these on in any combination to their offspring, and from then on they are not gender-related anymore: a second generation female is just as likely to have a dominant nose than a male sim is.

Custom hairs are usually gender-related, so even if a female sim inherits a dominant custom hair from her dad, she can't express it, and will express any hair gene from mom.

rjrobbie

15th Jul 2005, 11:09 AM

:confused: lol

Sonshine

16th Jul 2005, 07:01 AM

Does anybody know how I can take off those horrible droopy eyes that Nervous Subject passes on to EVERY child he produces? It's almost as if maxis made him in CAS!

IgnorantBliss

16th Jul 2005, 09:45 AM

Does anybody know how I can take off those horrible droopy eyes that Nervous Subject passes on to EVERY child he produces? It's almost as if maxis made him in CAS!

My guess is that you have to remove "eyes" from the list of dominant facial features in his DNA. He can still pass them on, but the chance is lower, especially if you pair him up with a female who has dominant eyes. (I have not tried this in my own game, though, so I'm not completely sure if editing works like this)

rainbow

16th Jul 2005, 10:27 AM

Does anybody know how I can take off those horrible droopy eyes that Nervous Subject passes on to EVERY child he produces? It's almost as if maxis made him in CAS!

They probably did.

aurian

16th Jul 2005, 11:29 AM

Actually, Nervous' eyes aren't too bad - in the experiments I've done, they actually look quite striking in his offspring and grandchildren! Dominant, yes, but ugly? Not terribly ;)

Sonshine

16th Jul 2005, 08:13 PM

My guess is that you have to remove "eyes" from the list of dominant facial features in his DNA. He can still pass them on, but the chance is lower, especially if you pair him up with a female who has dominant eyes. (I have not tried this in my own game, though, so I'm not completely sure if editing works like this)
First of all, he does not have eyes on the list of "dominant" features. I tried taking the brow and cheek off of the "dominant" line, but they (the eyes) still show up. I tried putting eyes on the wife's line, but the child still gets Nervous' eyes, lol. This still leads me to believe that the dominant genes for facial structure are possibly stored someplace else in the game.

IgnorantBliss

17th Jul 2005, 06:03 AM

First of all, he does not have eyes on the list of "dominant" features. I tried taking the brow and cheek off of the "dominant" line, but they (the eyes) still show up. I tried putting eyes on the wife's line, but the child still gets Nervous' eyes, lol. This still leads me to believe that the dominant genes for facial structure are possibly stored someplace else in the game.

That's odd, because when I looked at his DNA in my game, the eyes were listed as dominant.

The next time the wife gives birth, try repeating it: when she's about to go into labor save the game, let her give birth but then exit without saving and come back. Let the birth happen again. Maybe this time the child won't have those eyes. If you tried only once, there is still a fairly large chance for the child to get the eyes, even when they are not dominant, and since the game tends to produce identical siblings, you have to re-roll the genes by repeating the birth.

Sonshine

17th Jul 2005, 08:13 PM

In my game, he has 15 children and 14 of them have the droopy eyes! The only one who didn't was one twin. Even then he has another set of twins who both have the droopy eyes. So the eyes are very dominant.

IgnorantBliss

17th Jul 2005, 08:36 PM

You're clearly having the first born effect happening, then. Doesn't mean that his eyes are particularly dominant, it just means they are the "first choice" the game happens to make every time it generates a baby. If you do the birth repeating thing without saving, you have a better chance of getting a child with prettier eyes, especially because it worked with the other twin.

Sonshine

22nd Jul 2005, 09:57 AM

Well, I did some experimenting in a new copy of Strangetown and this time his chin was dominant! At first I tried w/the townie Barbara Young, and every single one of the kids had that sharp triangle shape head w/the pointed chin and HUGE cheekbones!! Talk about out of balance! Then I tried w/the townie Margaret Howe, and the kids from that weren't quite so bad, lol That tombstone of L&D is sure great! lol Anyway, it just seems to be random, when the neighborhood loads for the first time, which of his characteristics will be dominant. It also seems that no amount of editing on the facial features line of the DNA makes any diff whatsoever. At least w/Nervous Subject.

IgnorantBliss

22nd Jul 2005, 10:29 AM

Have you looked at the other Nervous Subject's DNA, if it actually is different? It would be odd that the facial features would be assigned dominance values at random like that while all their other genes are consistent, and if Nervous was created in CAS (like he probably was), then the dominance would be assigned at the time of his creation.

dea27

30th Jul 2005, 09:15 PM

Nervous was definitley created in CAS bc he replaces the original Nervous you will find some people gossipping about...He is just like Darleen, Micheal, and Skip-replacements for the originals.

baratron

2nd Aug 2005, 11:51 PM

I'm sure Nervous was created in Create-A-Sim because he has all homozygous genes. (Quick explanation to avoid you needing to scroll back in the thread too far: As humans and sims have 2 genes for each characteristic, you can have 2 identical genes (homozygous) or 2 different genes (heterozygous).) In TS2, all sims created in Create-A-Sim have homozygous genes for the characteristics you've chosen - so a sim with black hair has 2 black hair alleles.

So technically, the Nervous Subject that's in the game "cannot" be the son of Olive Specter, as he should have inherited one skin tone gene from his father and one from her.

However, I've discovered that the whole of Strangetown is a mess genetically! Only 4 of the Maxis-made family members have complete DNA: these are Ajay Loner, Nervous Subject, Pascal Curious and Lazlo Curious. All the rest are missing lines 7 & 10 in their DNA - the ones that start 268435462 (dtString): and 6 (dtString):, which determine the skin colour to be passed on. Thus, unless you have something like Pescado's Bad Birth Bug Fix, you might get a game crash when one of these sims tries to have a baby. Some sims even have extra blank lines, starting 268435463, 268435464, 7 (dtString) & 8 (dtString)! These extra lines seem to contain no information and can apparently be deleted safely.

Strangetown sims with missing DNA:
Jenny Smith, Chloe Singles, Erin Singles, Lola Singles, Kristen Singles, Loki Beaker, Circe Beaker, General Buzz Grunt, (Lyla Grunt), Ripp Grunt, Vidcund Curious, Olive Specter, Ophelia Nigmos.

Strangetown sims with missing AND extra DNA:
Pollination Tech #9 Smith, Johnny Smith, Jill Smith, Tank Grunt, Buck Grunt.

I'm going through my game fixing DNA at the moment. I've done the whole of the Smith & Singles families so far and have a text file with my new versions in. Eventually I'll have it for all the sims with missing DNA. I won't post it here as it's long and spammy, but if anyone wants it, let me know.

MaxoidTom

3rd Aug 2005, 02:50 AM

The game shouldn't crash in absence of those fields--it *should* actually revert back to the other skintone fields in the DNA. Those sims are probably pretty old, but didn't need to be updated.

Thorned Rose

3rd Aug 2005, 09:04 AM

Ok, I see some people are still confused about how genes work so here is Mendelian Genetics 101 :read:

For each characteristic (like eye colour, hair colour etc) there is one gene (way more complicated in real genetics but for TS2 this is how it is) that is made up of two alleles (once again way more complicated in real genetics)

Alleles are either dominant or recessive (more complicated in real genetics with complimentary, codominant, incomplete dominant alleles etc but don't worry about those) and are symbolised with either a capital letter or a lower case letter respectively e.g. B or b. When an allele is expressed it just means that it can be seen physically e.g. if a blue eye allele is 'expressed' the Sim has blue eyes. (An allele will always be expressed if it's dominant or homozygous recessive - see below for heterozygous and homozygous)
Dominance isn't always black and white either as some things are more dominant over other things e.g. brown is dominant over green which is dominant over blue (dunno if that is actually right but you get the picture) and in some cases both alleles can be expressed (or faked rather) such as in the case of skintone e.g. if an S1 (Pale) Sim has a child with an S3 (Brown) Sim the resulting child could be S2 (in between pale and brown) which in genetic terms would be a 'mixing' of the two alleles (but of course you can't actually do that literally in TS2 so it's faked).

Homozygous means that a given 'gene's' alleles are both the same e.g. gg OR BB
Heterozygous means that a given 'gene's' alleles are different e.g. Bg

Children inherit (get) one allele from each parent so that they don't end up with four alleles to a 'gene' e.g. B from dad and g from Mum so they end up with Bg. What alleles the parents pass on to their children is completely random at birth.

Possible gene combinations can easily be worked out with a 'punnett square' as follows:

In this example, we have two CAS Sims (meaning they will both be homozygous) - Male1 who has brown eyes (shown as BB) and Female1 who has green eyes (shown as gg):

http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/1776/punnett15uu.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

As you can see all of Male1 and Female1's children end up being Bg - This means that all of their children will end up with Brown eyes (because brown B is dominant over green g) no matter how many times they have babies.

If however one of Male1 and Female1's children grew up, say Male2, and had a baby with a green eyed CAS female (meaning that her gene is gg), lets call her Female2, the odds change as below:

http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/5610/punnett22jr.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

In this case Male2 and Female2's children have a 50% chance of either being Brown eyed (Bg) or green eyed (gg) however all the brown eyed children carry the green allele g meaning that they have the potential to have green eyed children even though they have brown eyes.

Things get more interesting however if you have two brown eyed Sims that both carry the green eye allele i.e. Bg:

http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/5626/punnett38si.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

So you can see here that 75% of Male3 and Female3's children would have Brown eyes (50% carrying the green allele [Bg] and 25% being homozygous brown[BB]) and 25% of their children would have green eyes (gg).

-- jagerjmr, your theory on recessive alleles stacking up is possible though maybe not in the way you think - e.g. if each generation of brown eyed Sims keeps 'breeding' with green eyed Sims eventually (after a LOT of full lifecycles i.e. deaths) green eyed Sims will become more prevalent than Brown eyed Sims, not because the green allele becomes dominant but rather because the gene pool becomes flooded with the green allele. This can be seen in humans with regards to blood types - most people don't know that O is in fact recessive but because the majority of people are O it stays as the most prevalent blood type.

If anybody is still confused, let me know and I will try and answer any questions.
For any 'geneticists' out there, let me know if I've fudged anything up - I've tried to be as accurate as possible but it's not entirely easy converting Mendelian Inheritance to TS2 genetics on top of having M.E. (Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome) which constantly makes my head feel like it's full of wool ;)
Everybody else - I hope this helps :)

Sonshine

6th Aug 2005, 04:33 PM

Thanks for your explanation Thorned Rose, it was very helpful. On a side note, I never knew that O+ Blood type was recessive! You learn something every day! Anyway on to the sims, lol. Maxoid Tom, you're right; the game does not crash, but it assigns the darkest skin tone (Skin 4) to the child. I did a complete experiment in my experimental Strangetown w/the Smith family and the kids had the darkest skin tone every time because both Jenny and PT9 are missing the skin tone gene. This same experimental Strangetown is where my Nervous Subject has, or seems to be passing down, a VERY dominant chin. Every single birth so far, has had that strong sharply trianular chin, but NOT the eyes. One child was from the townie Barbara Young. That sim was UGLY!! HUGE cheekbones and a VERY triangular face!! I tried several times w/those two and each and every single one had the huge cheekbones! In my good Strangetown, his eyes are dominant and not really his chin. Altering the facial features line does not seem to make any difference in my game. Baratron, I would like your explanation of how to fix these missing genes or how to replace them. I have a current (in my good Stranagetown hood) son of PT9 who has VERY large, VERY close together eyes and the darkest skin. All of their new children have the darkest skin tone except for the ones that PT9 had by abduction. You could post it in here for others also and I don't think it is considered spamming because it is still related to this topic. I PM'd you in TSR, but you evidently haven't been in there for a few days. Thanks!

fwiffo

6th Aug 2005, 07:14 PM

Actually, I don't think it's quite right to say that O+ is recessive. The O and the + are inhereted separately. There are three different alleles you can have at the A/B/O locii, A, B and O. A and B are codominant and O is recessive. Thus if you have AA or AO, you are type A. BB or BO is type B. Only OO is type O, but since A and B are codominant, if you have both the A and B alleles, you have type AB blood. The Rh factor (the +) is separate. There are actually several possible alleles, but they're roughly grouped into positive and negative, with positive being dominant over negative. So, O+ has one dominant and one recessive component. O- has two recessive components and is quite a bit less common than O+. A+ and A- are just a little less common as O+ and O- respectively.

Thorned Rose

6th Aug 2005, 11:50 PM

Thanks for that fwiffo - When I first heard about O being recessive I was told O+ was recessive but never told that the rh factor was a seperate allele - thanks for correcting me on that. :bow:

Sonshine

7th Aug 2005, 10:53 PM

Just thought I'd let everybody know that I figured everything out in how to fix the genetics in the strangetown characters. It's pretty simple, but tedious. PT9 was the most important of all of the characters to fix. I fixed him up and then ran a test by having a baby and it worked! Thanks for the heads up Baratron! Those kids that he had bf, especially the one twin boy were pretty bad! lol

Morphar

15th Aug 2005, 06:34 PM

The game shouldn't crash in absence of those fields--it *should* actually revert back to the other skintone fields in the DNA. Those sims are probably pretty old, but didn't need to be updated.

You are right in that it "should" not crash the game, but it probably does.
I have 2 characters in my game that make the game crash everytime in at least 5 attempts in a row at the time of birth. The male is the first alien son of Pascal Curious that I named ET. The woman is Erin Singles. You can see their DNA below.

I also made a test with ET and Lola Singles. The first 3 attempts was successful but on the fourth try the game crashed.

In another thread there are more examples on these crashes.
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=46097&page=2&pp=25&highlight=Erika

To prove it I like you or someone else here to show me the correct code for Erin Singles so I can test if the crash has to do with the genetics. According to Baratron in this thread, Erin Singles is one of the characters that have strange DNA.

ET N002_user0062 Instance 0x00000171

1 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
2 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46
298435457 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435458 (dtString) = 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435459 (dtString) = 2d6830c5-0b7c-48a1-9c55-4bd9cc873b0f
298435461 (dtString) =
298435462 (dtString) = 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
3 (dtString) = 12d4f3e1-fdbe-4fe7-ace3-46dd9ff52b51
5 (dtString) = mouth,eyes,
6 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46

Erika(Erin) N002_user0153

1 (dtString) = 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
2 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435457 (dtString) = 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435458 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435459 (dtString) = 51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7
298435461 (dtString) =
3 (dtString) = 51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7
4 (dtString) = -858851246:2140914850:1;
5 (dtString) = nose,brow,cheek,jaw,

JaiJai06

18th Aug 2005, 02:22 AM

Can some one please help me. At the start of my game I accidently made my sim's eys brown. They are meant to be blue. He has been through Uni and has a family so I don't want to start over. I have tried doing everything here but it still doesn't seem to change his eye colour. I have also tried to change his existing childrens' eyes as they have come out as brown as well. I have changed other things such as the number of days in that age stage and the star sign (to make my twins the same star sign as they keep coming out different for some reason even though they are twins.

Am I doing something wrong? Here is what I did.

I found my sim using the SimPE and found the DNA section. I changed the lines that had the eye colour codes in them to the blue and then comitted the file.

I don't understand why one part of my file is working but not the DNA or looks. Can anyone tell me if there is a step I have missed. Thanks.

ChibiChii

18th Aug 2005, 02:39 AM

Inge Jones

18th Aug 2005, 09:31 AM

Morphar

18th Aug 2005, 05:05 PM

The DNA doesn't alter a sim's physical appearance, only his/her genetics which they pass onto offspring.
I believe there is a way to alter the appearances, but I don't know them offhand.

Also, I just checked my files in N002, and, Morphar, your DNA settings for Erin seem to be the default ones. Don't know what could be causing the crashes, but I doubt it's the DNA.

The default DNA for Erin and for a couple of other characters in Strangetown is missing some lines. You can read about it in the text above from baratron in this thread.

If you take a look at the DNA for ET and Erin in my text above you can see that the format is different. If you then read the text by RGiles in this thread you will see what each line means.

If you like to contribute to finding the cause of the craches you can do the following experiment:

Let an alien son of Pascal have children with Erin. Whether you succeed or not it will give us a clue to the cause.

ldms510

18th Aug 2005, 08:31 PM

What I'd like to do is change the default dominance so that brown eyes are dominant over all others - like in real life - and so that there is a dominant form of red hair. I read that there is a dominant form of red hair in real life, and I saw it in action in a human couple I knew where the mother had very pale white skin and red hair, and the father had African black skin and hair. The daughter had light brown skin and red African-textured hair.

So whereabouts would this setting for the eyes be stored? For the hair, I understand I should simply make a custom red-hair genetic and use that where I want the dominant form to express itself.

I've been tinkering with this and it seems to work for me. You can try it and see how it will work for you.

In the skins.package file change the genetic value of the following the order you want (1-4 = High-low dominance).

-Instance list-
Brown - 0x4C229304
Dk Blue - 0x4C229303
Grey - 0xEC229305
Lt Blue - 0x6C229307
Green - 0xAC229306
Alien - 0x0C9C468E

-for hair (same file) in the section "Hair Tone XML". Same changes apply here.

BTW, the african male in the couple you spoke of could have had a recessive gene for red hair. There are a few theories that I know of how this could have come about. I think the dominant form of red hair comes across more in the form of dark auburn though... but that's just something that I've noticed growing up, could be completely wrong :)

Good luck and I hope this helps!

Inge Jones

18th Aug 2005, 08:50 PM

Ah brilliant - thanks very much! :)

What I did in the meantime is follow a tutorial for changing the default eye colours. I made the dark blue one into a very dark brown eye, the sort where there is also melanin in the whites. I decided that would be more suitable to have as a dominant trait than a blue eye. But now I have realised that it would only be suitable with a dark skin, as part of the darkness of the eye comes from the melanin loading of the skin. There's supposed to be some way of specifiying a skin colour to be present before a genetic is allowed on a sim being created in the game?

Sonshine

19th Aug 2005, 08:25 PM

If you like to contribute to finding the cause of the craches you can do the following experiment:

Let an alien son of Pascal have children with Erin. Whether you succeed or not it will give us a clue to the cause.
I just ran an experiment in my Strangetown. I teleported Arkasha (Pascal's alien son) to the Singles household. I put an tombstone of L&D on the property and made Erin pregnant w/Arkasha's baby. My game crashed twice at the time of birth. The first time is w/Erin's DNA fixed to normal and the second time as it appears by default. It would be interesting to find out what the cause of the crash is. Haven't tried w/Chloe yet.

Edit: I just did another experiment by having Pascal Abducted again. I grew up the son that he had, moved Erin in, got her pregnant by him and everything went normally. The game did not crash at all! I only did it once though. Maybe there's a coding glitch w/the first son.

Larissa

20th Aug 2005, 07:41 AM

can someone help me!!!! i had a problem with my sims and now none of them have skin color anymore!!! and no hair color either!! its all white and grey with blue and red lines .. kinda like a map!! IM DESPERATE!!!!!!! PLEASEEE hELP!!!!!!!

Morphar

21st Aug 2005, 09:59 PM

Edit: I just did another experiment by having Pascal Abducted again. I grew up the son that he had, moved Erin in, got her pregnant by him and everything went normally. The game did not crash at all! I only did it once though. Maybe there's a coding glitch w/the first son.

I have the same experince. Some Pascal son's can have 4 to 5 children with Erin without crashing the game and some can have none.

I "corrected" the DNA for my Erin but it didn't help. Now I will try to change the recessive DNA for skintone/ayecolor for the alien.

This is very annoying as you have to save the game before every birth to be sure that you don't lose all you have done before that. Thanks to the latest version of inSimenator I can now do an immidiate abortion. In the older version you had to wait a number of days and sometimes it was to late.

Can you see any difference if you campare the DNA of "my" ET with your alien son?

baratron

22nd Aug 2005, 02:01 AM

Morphar - I emailed you the DNA file at the address you gave me in PM, but it bounced back.

This is the DNA for my half-alien son of Pascal Curious. He was born in-game BEFORE University: (Remember that sims born AFTER University have the lines in a different order)

1 (dtString): 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
2 (dtString): 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46
268435457: 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435458: 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435459: 2d6839c5-0b7c-48a1-9c55-4bd9cc873b0f
268435461:
268435462: 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
3 (dtString): 12d4f3e1-fdbe-4fe7-ace3-46dd9ff52b51
5 (dtString): mouth,eyes,
6 (dtString): 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

Both of his hair colour alleles are set to black hair: line 1 and 268435457.
His expressed skin tone is alien (line 2), and his recessive skin tone is tan (2684345458). The game has decided that only the tan skin tone will be passed on to his offspring (lines 268435462 and 6 are identical). He also has recessive dark blue eyes, which will be chosen for a child of his.

The only difference I see between your ET and my Avogadro Curious is that you have changed or mis-typed one of the numbers in his DNA - which I've highlighted in bold on my version.

This is my "fixed" version of Erin "Singles" (really Beaker)'s DNA:
1 (dtString): 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
2 (dtString): 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435457: 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435458: 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435459: 51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7
268435461:
268435462: 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
3 (dtString): 51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7
4 (dtString): -858851246:2140914850:1;
5 (dtString): brow,cheek,ears,
6 (dtString): 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

Again, the only difference is the addition of those two extra lines, the "Skin tone to be passed on" lines. I assumed she was homozygous for skin colour, as her brother, Loki Beaker, is also skin tone 1.

It's true that the game SHOULDN'T crash at birth, but I'm surprised at MaxoidTom's assertion about it, because it was one of the first big TS2 bugs I heard about when I started playing 2 months ago. According to several people who know more about the code than I do, the game crashes because it's trying to assign a non-existent skin tone to the baby. If one or both parents has missing DNA for the "Skin tone to be passed on" lines, a crash MAY occur. It is somewhat random, depending on which parent the game decides to look at to assign a skintone for the baby.

You can, btw, guarantee a crash to occur if you give one parent a skintone that doesn't exist for babies, like the mannequin skin and some people's robot skins, but this is a slightly different issue.

According to J.M. Pescado, and I quote here from the RTFM file for his Bad Birth Fix (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/alpha/), it
Resolves an issue where the Set-To-Next primitive could return output that was a load of twaddle, resulting in a jump-reset during a birth. Why this happens is completely unknown and this fix is recommended only if you have this problem.

As far as anyone knows, it's an intermittent bug - some users have it and others don't. To make sure I didn't get it, I took the precautionary step of learning what the sim DNA should look like and fixing it all myself. I can do this because I am technically clueful. As you know from many of the people who visit the Official BBS, the standard of PC knowledge among simmers in general is pretty low (users of forums like MTS2 are the exception). So the only options these people have are to use a third-party fix, or to blindly reinstall their game, hoping that whatever it is that makes the Set-To-Next primitive go nuts doesn't happen in the new install.

Sonshine

22nd Aug 2005, 08:03 AM

Morphar and Baratron, my half alien son of Pascal Curious is identical to yours except for the error the you pointed out Baratron. I noticed though, that you gave Erin a recessive med skin tone whereas I made her homozygous for skin tone 1 and made the last line skin tone 1 to be carried on. I'm curious if this was intentional or a mistake. I don't have any copy of the DNA for the second alien son bc I didn't save the game. I could go into my experimental EA Games folder and do that and save the game and then check his DNA and compare it against Pascal's alien son in my good folder. I'm also going to try making his alien skin tone recessive and skintone 2 dominant to see if that has anything to do w/it. Has anybody tried w/Vicund's son (or daughter) to see if he/she crashes the game also? I could also try putting in that "Bad Birth Fix" by JM Pescado and see what happens. I'm glad you're posting the DNA order for the pre Univ game bc I don't have Univ installed yet. Kind of waiting on maxis to release their patch to fix some of the more troublesome bugs.

Edit: I did some experiments again. I had the game generate a new EA Games folder and did some experimenting w/the Curious household. I sped up Pascal's pregnancy, and loaded the game a couple more times until I got a boy. I grew him up, then moved Erin in and got her pregnant by him. Everything went totally normal. Three times in a row, she had a normal birth w/o the game crashing. So, I quit the household w/o saving and loaded it again and then grew up Pascal's son again. I moved Erin in and she had two normal births again. The thired one was normal also, but I decided to quit and then alter both hers and "Alien's" genetics. I added the last line to hers to say that she would pass on skintone 1 and I deleted the eyes from Alien so that they wouldn't be dominant. I loaded the game and house again and played the birth and the game crashed. I'm wondering if it has something to do w/the tweaking of the genetics of these two particular sims. The game didn't crash at all until I tweaked the genetics of "Alien" and Erin. Just a thought. Let me know your thoughts.

Morphar

22nd Aug 2005, 04:59 PM

This is the DNA for my half-alien son of Pascal Curious. He was born in-game BEFORE University: (Remember that sims born AFTER University have the lines in a different order)

1 (dtString): 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
2 (dtString): 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46
268435457: 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435458: 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435459: 2d6839c5-0b7c-48a1-9c55-4bd9cc873b0f
268435461:
268435462: 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
3 (dtString): 12d4f3e1-fdbe-4fe7-ace3-46dd9ff52b51
5 (dtString): mouth,eyes,
6 (dtString): 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

Both of his hair colour alleles are set to black hair: line 1 and 268435457.
His expressed skin tone is alien (line 2), and his recessive skin tone is tan (2684345458). The game has decided that only the tan skin tone will be passed on to his offspring (lines 268435462 and 6 are identical). He also has recessive dark blue eyes, which will be chosen for a child of his.

The only difference I see between your ET and my Avogadro Curious is that you have changed or mis-typed one of the numbers in his DNA - which I've highlighted in bold on my version.

The typo is mine, sorry. I miss a function in SimPE to print or copy/paste text. How do you copy yours?

Isn't there a more essential differense on line 10 that start with a 6? My ET have the alien skin tone there and yours have the tan code and it's not identical to line 7..

According to RGiles findings he don't know what 7 and 10 are used for. There are skin tones on lines 2, 4, 7 and 10. Line 7 sometimes have a negative number. Is it exactly identified what each of these lines controls?

Morphar

22nd Aug 2005, 05:50 PM

Has anybody tried w/Vicund's son (or daughter) to see if he/she crashes the game also?

I have done that too. I got a crash with a son but not the first time. After 4 or 5 attempts it crashed. And guess who i selected to be the mother? Erin of course. Poor woman.
I have also tried alien doughters from both Pascal and Vidcund. I have not had a crash with them. Maybee a coincident. One of them now have 10 children but not with an alien but with Ajay Loner. Maybe I should select PT9 or his son.

The thired one was normal also, but I decided to quit and then alter both hers and "Alien's" genetics. I added the last line to hers to say that she would pass on skintone 1 and I deleted the eyes from Alien so that they wouldn't be dominant. I loaded the game and house again and played the birth and the game crashed. I'm wondering if it has something to do w/the tweaking of the genetics of these two particular sims. The game didn't crash at all until I tweaked the genetics of "Alien" and Erin. Just a thought. Let me know your thoughts.

Interesting! Do you have the crash each time with the changed DNA? What happens if you change the code back and play the same scenario? If it works again you have find something interesting. But make only one change at the time. I guess it's something with the alien code. I corrected Erin to no avail.

Note: The alien code from baratron and me is NOT exactly the same on line 10. Important or not???? Try mine! But correct my typo pointed out by baratron first.

I feel we are making progress every day.

baratron

22nd Aug 2005, 11:12 PM

The typo is mine, sorry. I miss a function in SimPE to print or copy/paste text. How do you copy yours?
I use Windows keyboard shortcuts. Highlight the required text with the mouse and press CTRL-C to copy it to the Windows clipboard. Then paste it into your editing program (I usually use WordPad).

According to RGiles findings he don't know what 7 and 10 are used for. There are skin tones on lines 2, 4, 7 and 10. Line 7 sometimes have a negative number. Is it exactly identified what each of these lines controls?
OK, let's go through the lines again in detail. I'm getting confused by terms like "line 1" as only the first 2 lines of the sim DNA start with the correct number!

1st line: starts 1 (dtString): Expressed hair colour.
2nd line: starts 2 (dtString): Expressed skin tone.
3rd line: starts 268435457 (dtString): "Recessive" hair colour (may be the same as 1st line)
4th line: starts 268435458 (dtString): "Recessive" skin tone (may be the same as 2nd line)
5th line: starts 268435459 (dtString): Recessive eye colour
6th line: starts 268435461 (dtString): ALWAYS BLANK
7th line: starts 268435462 (dtString): Skin tone to be passed on to offspring.
8th line: starts 3 (dtString): Expressed eye colour.
9th line: starts 4 (dtString): Negative number. See below.
10th line: starts 5 (dtString): Facial features to be passed on to offspring.
11th line: starts 6 (dtString): Skin tone to be passed on to offspring.

When a negative number appears on the ninth line, notice that the line starts 4 (dtString). This extra line of DNA is present in the DNA of any sim that has moved Neighbourhood. I don't know what it identifies, but no sim born in-game or made in Create-A-Sim has it. I think it can be safely ignored.

I do not know why the 7th and 10th/11th line both contain Skin tone to be passed on to offspring. Perhaps one line gives the skintone for boy babies and one is for girl babies? Or it is completely random. I don't know. You would probably have to ask MaxoidTom or someone else who knows a lot about the game code to explain it.

Isn't there a more essential differense on line 10 that start with a 6? My ET have the alien skin tone there and yours have the tan code and it's not identical to line 7...
Now, strangely - in my game, one of Pascal's alien children has identical skin tones on the 7th and 10th line, but the other does not. The child with identical skin tones was born in-game before I added University, but the child with different skin tones was born after University. I am not sure whether this makes a difference. They are both still children in my game, so I haven't had them reproduce yet, nor is that likely to happen anytime soon.

What I don't understand is that, if you are having so many problems, why don't you try J.M. Pescado's Bad Birth Fix? You will need to remove the InSIMinator from the game before doing this, as they clash. You can find the Bad Birth Fix at More Awesome Than You - alpha hacks (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/alpha/). If I understand correctly, if you use the Bad Birth Fix to make a sim baby, the DNA problem is resolved. This baby will be able to grow up to have children as normal.

I think I've now told you everything I know about sim DNA.

rainbow

23rd Aug 2005, 11:50 PM

IgnorantBliss

24th Aug 2005, 04:40 AM

If a Sim receives two different skin tone genes from his parents, he can express any skintone within the range between them. If he receives S1 from one parent and S4 from the other parent, then he can express any skin tone from S1 to S4. If he receives S1 and S2 from his parents, he can only express S1 or S2. There are no dominant skin tones other than custom skins. The child will always express a skin tone that falls within the range of the skin tones received from his parents, even if it is a different tone than either of them expresses.

This is true with the four regular Maxis skintones. The alien tone is a little different, since obviously it can't be in the same kind of range as the normal ones. Earlier in this topic there was some talk about this. I seem to remember that if one parent is homozygous for the green skintone, then this parent's child will always express this skintone even if he inherits one of the four regular ones from the other parent. If one parent is heterozygous for the alien tone, and their other skintone gene is one of the four regular ones, and the other parent has two regular genes, then the alien skintone will be neither dominant nor recessive, the child has a 50% chance of inheriting the green gene, and, if inherited, then a 50% chance of expressing it. Kind of complicated. And then custom skintones are a whole another issue.

Inge Jones

24th Aug 2005, 04:16 PM

I think the way they ended up was that Maxis probably started with as strict as possible genetic science, and then after they tested it for a while thought "hmm the users are going to be pretty pissed if they don't get to see a lot of sims born with their lovingly created new genetics" so they upped it in precedence. I reckon a lot of that compromise went on as they tuned stuff.

Morphar

25th Aug 2005, 08:40 PM

I use Windows keyboard shortcuts. Highlight the required text with the mouse and press CTRL-C to copy it to the Windows clipboard. Then paste it into your editing program (I usually use WordPad).

OK, I dicovered that myself and that CTRL-V can be used to paste in SimPE.

OK, let's go through the lines again in detail. I'm getting confused by terms like "line 1" as only the first 2 lines of the sim DNA start with the correct number!

1st line: starts 1 (dtString): Expressed hair colour.
2nd line: starts 2 (dtString): Expressed skin tone.
3rd line: starts 268435457 (dtString): "Recessive" hair colour (may be the same as 1st line)
4th line: starts 268435458 (dtString): "Recessive" skin tone (may be the same as 2nd line)
5th line: starts 268435459 (dtString): Recessive eye colour
6th line: starts 268435461 (dtString): ALWAYS BLANK
7th line: starts 268435462 (dtString): Skin tone to be passed on to offspring.
8th line: starts 3 (dtString): Expressed eye colour.
9th line: starts 4 (dtString): Negative number. See below.
10th line: starts 5 (dtString): Facial features to be passed on to offspring.
11th line: starts 6 (dtString): Skin tone to be passed on to offspring.

When a negative number appears on the ninth line, notice that the line starts 4 (dtString). This extra line of DNA is present in the DNA of any sim that has moved Neighbourhood. I don't know what it identifies, but no sim born in-game or made in Create-A-Sim has it. I think it can be safely ignored.

I now know that the line order is irrelevant so lets use "linenames" instead. I noticed that you kept that negative number for your own Erin code. I didn't in my experiments at first. Browsing through a list in SimPE showed about 100 instances with that code.

I do not know why the 7th and 10th/11th line both contain Skin tone to be passed on to offspring. Perhaps one line gives the skintone for boy babies and one is for girl babies? Or it is completely random. I don't know. You would probably have to ask MaxoidTom or someone else who knows a lot about the game code to explain it.

For my couple, the code on linename 6 had a big impact on the game. My alien have the alien skintone there. In combination with the non existing corresponding line for Maxis Erin it makes the game crash. The crash is consistent and repeatable.

Now, strangely - in my game, one of Pascal's alien children has identical skin tones on the 7th and 10th line, but the other does not. The child with identical skin tones was born in-game before I added University, but the child with different skin tones was born after University. I am not sure whether this makes a difference. They are both still children in my game, so I haven't had them reproduce yet, nor is that likely to happen anytime soon.

I don't have Uni and both combinations exist in my games. If you play the game with unmodified characters with missing linename 6 you will have problems with the ones that have alien skintone on linename 6.

What I don't understand is that, if you are having so many problems, why don't you try J.M. Pescado's Bad Birth Fix? You will need to remove the InSIMinator from the game before doing this, as they clash. You can find the Bad Birth Fix at More Awesome Than You - alpha hacks (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/alpha/). If I understand correctly, if you use the Bad Birth Fix to make a sim baby, the DNA problem is resolved. This baby will be able to grow up to have children as normal.

I don't have SO many problems. This one is enough to keep me occupied. I have tried the BB fix but it didn't help. I read that it solved a custom skin problem. I only use standard colors. You have probably solved my problem anyway. But I'll make a new try with BB.

I think I've now told you everything I know about sim DNA.

That was a great deal. After comparing our DNA codes for the alien I decided to do the following:

I changed the code on linename 6 for my alien to the same as on linename 268435462, (tan skintone). The program did not crach. I filled the house with 6 children, none of them with alien skintone of course.

I changed this linenam 6 code back and forth and the crash is definitily consistent.

Next step was to use your DNA code for Erin and a not changed alien. The game didn't crash. I again filled the house with 6 children. About 50% of them have alien skintone.
I noticed some differences between our Erin code also. Linename 268435458 and 5 differ. Probably these are set at random.

To MaxoidTom or someone else:
What skintone is to be expected on the child that refuse to come out with the genes of the parents shown below.

To baratron: Thanks again and please try to mail me the text file again. I have checked both accounts and they are totally emty. I think there is a 10 MB limit though. If it fails again why not upload it here.

To Sonshine: I would be most greateful if you could verify my findings in your game

The DNA for the parents that make Sims2 to crash:

ET N002_user0062 Instance 0x00000171

1 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
2 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46
298435457 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435458 (dtString) = 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435459 (dtString) = 2d6839c5-0b7c-48a1-9c55-4bd9cc873b0f
298435461 (dtString) =
298435462 (dtString) = 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
3 (dtString) = 12d4f3e1-fdbe-4fe7-ace3-46dd9ff52b51
5 (dtString) = mouth,eyes,
6 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46

Erika(Erin) N002_user0153

1 (dtString) = 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
2 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435457 (dtString) = 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435458 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435459 (dtString) = 51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7
298435461 (dtString) =
3 (dtString) = 51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7
4 (dtString) = -858851246:2140914850:1;
5 (dtString) = nose,brow,cheek,jaw,

Sonshine

26th Aug 2005, 05:07 PM

Morphar

26th Aug 2005, 07:39 PM

Yes, Morphar my Alien and your ET are identical as is both of our Erins. I also experimented by changing Alien's linename 6 to skin tone 2 and none of the births w/Erin crashed the game at all.

Heureka!

Also as I posted above, even if I added linename 6 to Erin, the game still crashed upon birth when Alien had the alien skintone in linename 6.

The linename 268435462 is also missing in our Erin. Add it but keep linename 4 with the negative number. Can you verify that it works if you use baratron's Erin?

I will try some more combinations also, like if ET have alien code on linename 6 AND 298435462.

Anyone else out there that can verify this?
Anyone that can verify this with university installed?

Sonshine

30th Aug 2005, 04:54 PM

Well Morphar, I reluctantly followed your directions thinking it wouldn't work. However, it did! I added in the line that you said and NONE of the births crashed the game. I don't know if it's just my game or what, but I couldn't have more than 7 sims in that household. When she had 2 babies, I had Pascal move out w/both of them and had her have more. Some were skintone 1, some skintone 2 and a couple were alien skintone. I tried removing the linename 4 and adding linename 6, but that crashed the game upon birth.

bobandfish

30th Aug 2005, 07:11 PM

one of my sims has had a baby with "stella terano"and they all are green ?
do the next ones come out green to
dont wont a lot full of green sims :D

Morphar

30th Aug 2005, 08:20 PM

Well Morphar, I reluctantly followed your directions thinking it wouldn't work. However, it did!

Well I'm not that surpriced. We are running the same program aren't we?

I did a test with an abducted girl with the same code on linename 268435462 and 6 as my ET. Johnny Smith tried to make her pregnant and program crashed. Same story. Obviously there is an error of type "showstopper" in the Sims2 program.

I thought the case could be closed until I run a test having my ET and Kristen Singles have a try as parents. The game DIDN'T crash!!!!. At least not the first and second time but the third. Kirsten and Erin both have missing lines in their DNA Only difference is Kirsten is brown and Erin is white.

J.M. Pescado's Bad Birth Fix is next I think.

HeartDeco

31st Aug 2005, 01:43 AM

Your custom brown hair should be dominant over all the maxis standard hair colors unless someone has manually modified the value for that in the .package file with SimPE. Since custom hairs, by default, are sex-linked (unless you create hairs for both genders and give them the same genetic ID instead of the unique ID created by Body Shop)...

Greetings Fwiffo and All,

First, I am so glad that you brought up the Mendelian Genetics. This has always been the basis for my understanding of genetics and everything else has been confusing these basic and undeniable facts. They are indeed very easy to learn and handy to know and it makes you darn glad you paid attention in Biology class.

Second, I wanted to interject a comment/question about custom genetics.

I have been told not to trust the genetics of custom content unless you know the artist's work or you did a thorough job yourself. It is my understanding from this that unless you know that the color was a true change, that is to say in the code itself and not just a physical retexture, that it is entirely possible for the genetics to default to the original content from which it was cloned. That said, it seems you really have to know what the original color was to see how these oddities can happen.

Which Maxis hair color was used to start the recolor process? I believe that would depend on the artist's preference and the desired results of their finished product. For example: If they wanted a softer brown, maybe more shine or highlights, it may be easier to start with a blonde clone, rather than a brown one. You see what I mean? - Do you think this could be a factor into some of the problems that people are running into when they are referring to custom content outcome in their game? What if the artist used the grey-white elder hair for a base - where would this factor in?

This concept has really made me take a second look at custom genetics and retextures. In this I have decided to consider custom content 'for looks only' and realize that it is a gamble, if inheritable traits are enjoyable and/or important to my game. I wish that there could be more description given in what people offer for download, especially here at MTS2, because I feel you can't get away with much here, if it's not good or dependable. I trust genetic downloads from here, more than anywhere else.

I know it is just a game and people undoubtedly will stop by and comment on such, but it is important to many of us who put a lot of time and effort into these specifics, especially for legacy families. It would be nice for people to understand how helpful it could and would be for all, by just listing the basic facts on the original object from which their project was cloned.

Thanks again and to all for this valuable topic and discussion,

HeartDeco

Sonshine

31st Aug 2005, 07:23 AM

Well I'm not that surpriced. We are running the same program aren't we?
Yes, we're running the same program, lol. The reason I didn't think it would work is because it gave Erin 11 lines instead of the normal 10.

J.M. Pescado's Bad Birth Fix is next I think.
I tried that in several instances and it didn't do a thing for me at all. The game crashed anyway before I fixed Erin up w/the xtra line.

HeartDeco

31st Aug 2005, 07:46 AM

Now this is interesting - I just tried the new TS2 Content Management Tool from the official site.

I ran it through all the custom skintones that I had accumulated. This exercise was very telling about the content itself. In my post above I mentioned the retextures/recolors and the original from which they may have been cloned.

I went through about six, so far, and only found one - a custom blue skin - which appeared to cover all the body types, age groups and sexes as stated in the description. It also stated that it was based on the #3 skintone, which probably had the closest depth of color that the creator wanted. As a sidenote, the teeth also remained white as in the default and there were two hair color images, one black and one brown. All the life stage faces, male and female, had the brown eyes, except the baby, which appears to have dark blue in most every case. I assume dark blue is also the Maxis default for babies, as many babies in real life approximate this example and this may be why the dark blue eye color carries near the same genetic weight as the brown eye.

I am not sure the following is complete, so help me out, I did check with SimPE on one of the characters, Alexander Goth, chosen at random. Not including the baby and toddler bodies, I figure there should be at least 32 images in the custom content file. Since YA shares the adult skintone, this allows three of each body type, per sex, per each of the four age groups, with a male and female face for each age group from child to elder, plus one for the unisex toddler face. If you add the whole-body baby image, which includes the eye and face and a single, body type image for the toddler, this would make an expected minimum of 34 color images for one skintone. I do not know if all these images are required to complete a custom set, or if the data alone is sufficient, but I saw from 22 - 38 images represented in just the few I scanned. Included in these images were anywhere from 1-5 pics of just the color in degrees that would represent each life stage. Some had just one shade for all and some had 2 or 4 shades, which I guess may represent the male and female in the 2 and the four major age groups from child to elder in the latter case.

In only one case of a 'creamy pale' skintone, were the eyes changed to a light blue instead of the default dark blue, but the other eyes used for the other ages were the usual brown. Due to limits of the program, I could not tell if either the brown or blues were custom eyes, or just the Maxis brown and blues. In this case and assuming the light blue eye used was custom, it should override the brown eye if the Maxis brown was left as the default when the baby transitioned into a toddler - Is this right? If they were both Maxis eyes, than the brown eye would be expressed over the light blue, as expected - Yes?

In three cases of a deep black skintone (black-black, blue-black and off-black) and all made by different people, none had complete image files as should be expected. Two of the skintones were cloned from the #1 and the third skintone from #2 and I have to again assume that these were chosen as the least problematic ones to use as a base. One of the skintones appeared to have been colored using an 'all-over' semi-transparent effect, as the eyes and teeth were also black or rather varying shades of grey, due to their underlying color - Yuck!

Anyway, this is why I feel I can no longer trust custom content where genetics are important and why I think more information should be included when custom genetics are offered for download. This new Maxis tool was very helpful and I was able to disable or delete the questionable files within this program.

Please, does anyone care to comment on this observation?

Thank you,

HeartDeco

HeartDeco

31st Aug 2005, 07:58 AM

I did a test with an abducted girl with the same code on linename 268435462 and 6 as my ET. Johnny Smith tried to make her pregnant and program crashed. Same story. Obviously there is an error of type "showstopper" in the Sims2 program. J.M. Pescado's Bad Birth Fix is next I think.

Morphar,

I was able for Johnny Smith to have two boys with a CAS female(black hair, grey eyes, and if I remember correctly, she was a #1 skintone). The boys had either her skin color or #2 and her hair color with his green eyes. The only really weird thing is that they both had pointy ears until they went to Uni, then they reverted to normal ears for both when they became YAs. Both Johnny and the CAS mother had normal ears. Go figure!

HeartDeco

Morphar

4th Sep 2005, 10:32 PM

Morphar,

I was able for Johnny Smith to have two boys with a CAS female(black hair, grey eyes, and if I remember correctly, she was a #1 skintone). The boys had either her skin color or #2 and her hair color with his green eyes. The only really weird thing is that they both had pointy ears until they went to Uni, then they reverted to normal ears for both when they became YAs. Both Johnny and the CAS mother had normal ears. Go figure!

HeartDeco

Johnny Smith, Erin Singles and a number of others in Strangetown are missing these lines in their DNA:

268435462 (dtString): Skin tone to be passed on to offspring.
6 (dtString): Skin tone to be passed on to offspring.

The Sims2 will crash at the time of birth if any of Johnny or Erin etc. have a baby with an half-alien from an abduction that have the alien skintone in their DNA in the line with the prefix 6.
Example:
6 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46

If you like to contribute to the "genetic mysteries of Sims2" you can try to change the DNA for your CAS female accordingly and try again. You can do these changes with SimPE. Note that it's only the skintone DNA that causes the craches.

In the light of this it is funny to see that on Maxis web page they say that the characters have DNA and to illustrate it there is a picture of PT9. PT9 is one of the persons that have incomplete DNA. If you give his wife, Jenny, some elexir and make here pregnant with PT9 you will have a genetic surprice.

http://thesims2.ea.com/about/index_ts2.php

Sonshine

5th Sep 2005, 09:01 AM

Johnny Smith, Erin Singles and a number of others in Strangetown are missing these lines in their DNA:

If you give his wife, Jenny, some elexir and make here pregnant with PT9 you will have a genetic surprice.

http://thesims2.ea.com/about/index_ts2.php
If you have PT9 and Jenny have more kids, they will turn out w/the darkest skin tone and at least one of them will have the HUGE alien shaped eyes! I had them have twins and here is a pic of the one w/the eyes! UGH! I finally took a clone of his brother and put it on him. I figure that there is identical twins irl, why not in sims! lol Just couldn't stand to look at those eyes anymore!

graccee

5th Sep 2005, 09:08 AM

This is probably becuase Plo tech (her hubby) is an alien thats what makes the eyes and the black skin is because black skin and alien skin is half and half

Morphar

5th Sep 2005, 12:02 PM

This is probably becuase Plo tech (her hubby) is an alien thats what makes the eyes and the black skin is because black skin and alien skin is half and half

There is no black skin in any of the parents DNA. Jenny is white and PT9 is green. None of them have a black "pass on " gene either. In fact they have no "pass on" genes at all and that is posibly the cause they have black babies.
The children can only be white or green (light green?) .
I "repaired" the DNA for both and all works as should be expecteed. A lot of nice green children with one white and one green gene to pass on to their offspring.
One of them where white with only white genes to pass on though. The code on linename 2 and 4 was white. That gave me more headache. How do I repair the genes of Jill? She is missing the "pass on" genes too. Should I give her one of each or only white. Her code on linename 2 and 4 is both white.

Sonshine

7th Sep 2005, 05:16 AM

How do I repair the genes of Jill? She is missing the "pass on" genes too. Should I give her one of each or only white. Her code on linename 2 and 4 is both white.
I gave her skintone 2 on line 4 since her father is skintone 2.

Morphar

7th Sep 2005, 07:11 AM

I gave her skintone 2 on line 4 since her father is skintone 2.

Are we talking about the same person? Isn't Jill Smith the daughter of PT9 and Jenny Smith?

Sonshine

7th Sep 2005, 09:18 AM

Oh duh!!! I wasn't thinking! For some reason I was thinking of Jenny! I'm so sorry! Ok, I changed Jill to have the alien skin tone for line 4. I also changed her hair for red on line 268435457 to reflect PT's red hair. I did the same thing for Johnny. I gave him red hair on line 268435457, but I kept him w/the alien skintone to be passed on to his children.

Morphar

10th Sep 2005, 09:27 PM

Strange things happens in Strangetown/Sims2. Below you can see the skintone genes from one of my families. The codes for the child is very strange in relation to the parents, don't you think? Is there anyone that knows what can be the cause?

Male:
2 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46
298435458 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46
298435462 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46
6 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46

Female:
2 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435458 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435462 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
6 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

Child:
2 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435458 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435462 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
6 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

Morphar

11th Sep 2005, 04:02 PM

Strange things happens in Strangetown/Sims2. Below you can see the skintone genes from one of my families. The codes for the child is very strange in relation to the parents, don't you think? Is there anyone that knows what can be the cause?

I will answer my own question then.

This game sucks.

If the dad dies between woohoo and time of birth the child get no genes from him at all. He is neither recognized as the father of the child. The child will have no father but a mother and siblings.

Sonshine

12th Sep 2005, 07:55 AM

I take it that the dad died before the child was born? Genetics is determined at the time of birth. That means if the dad died bf the child is born, he will be a clone of the mother bc there is no father present in the game to choose genetics from. The child will always be male if the mother is female. This is why Brandi Broke always has a black haired boy (unless you resurrect Skip).

rainbow

12th Sep 2005, 09:26 PM

I believe JM said that if the tombstone of the father is deleted, this will happen, but it should not happen if the father's tombstone is still present because his character data is still intact.

Morphar

12th Sep 2005, 09:43 PM

I believe JM said that if the tombstone of the father is deleted, this will happen, but it should not happen if the father's tombstone is still present because his character data is still intact.

OK. Reasonable but not very realistic. In an answer from MaxoidTom in this thread I read that things are set at the time of birth. There are probably reasons for that although I don't see why.

mosbyte

12th Sep 2005, 10:52 PM

Sonshine

12th Sep 2005, 11:37 PM

MaxoidTom

12th Sep 2005, 11:50 PM

I've played around with sim DNA but never had a crash resulting from meddling with their genes. I've never used the alien skintone, and I've always made sure all my sims have four identical "dtstringcodes" (lines 2, 58, 62, & 6 as I call 'em) present in their DNA files. I for one don't believe Maxis spent enough time developing a valid, or at least convincing DNA structure. The first indication I got came from the alien skintone dtstring, which instead of looking like a basic and "thought out" code (like 5, following logically behind skintones 1, 2 ,3 & 4 with lots of zeroes) it resembles a custom skin code thrown-in at the last minute to add spice to the game. My 2nd indication has already been mentioned, the fact that a baby's DNA is decided at the time he or she is delivered. There are some other disappointments, like facial distortions when parents were attractive and the original Maxis 4 skintones and eyecolors taking precedence over custom content.

In spite of all that, I still love the heck out this game! Let's hope the fellows at Maxis are paying attention to our observations and listening to our gripes.

Custom content takes precedence over Maxis genetics, unless of course the custom content gene wasn't passed down (50% chance for each gene). As for facial distortions, we did or best, but morphing two faces together and trying to come up with something "attractive" versus accurate is very hard programmatically speaking.

Alien skintone was meant to act like custom content. The fact that the normal Maxis skintones look like "1, 2, 3, 4" was for backwards compatibility with some systems when we refactored it. Make no mistake, aliens were in the game from a very early point and were not "thrown in" as it were.

Baby DNA is decided at time of creation, because, well, the sim does not exist on disk yet. From the game's point of view, it isn't a real sim until it pops out of the plumb bob, so of course it wouldn't have any dna yet. This has no religious or any other meaning, it's just so that the game doesn't lag after woohoo, giving the user an indication that a baby is on the way--the performance hit is taken when giving birth.

MaxoidTom

13th Sep 2005, 12:01 AM

Don't look now, but I just discovered that the genetics in Veronaville are just as messed up as in Strangetown! Again there're only 4 characters that don't have missing DNA lines. :( I've not experimented w/having babies yet to see if any of them crash the game though. So far, all I've done was added line 6 as the last line in the DNA for skintone for all of them. I'm almost afraid to look at Pleasantview characters! Mosbyte, the crashing was not due to our messing w/the genes, but due to maxis' incomplete or conflicting DNA structures. Our messing is, if anything else, trying to correct what maxis didn't do.

The DNA structure was changed to include the "expressed skintone" gene near the end of the project, to fully accomodate custom content. However, some characters were not remade, since it was deemed too risky at the point in the project. Still, the game should work fine with these older sims, albeit not as accurately as with sims who have the full DNA structure.

But I guess you guys are sticklers for genetic accuracy, so have fun!

rainbow

13th Sep 2005, 12:05 AM

This has no religious or any other meaning, it's just so that the game doesn't lag after woohoo, giving the user an indication that a baby is on the way--the performance hit is taken when giving birth.
But we do get the "lullaby" music, so we know that a baby is on the way although we don't get the performance lag then. Was this intended to just be a more subtle indication? I always know when my sims get pregnant.

Sonshine

13th Sep 2005, 12:40 AM

The DNA structure was changed to include the "expressed skintone" gene near the end of the project, to fully accomodate custom content. However, some characters were not remade, since it was deemed too risky at the point in the project. Still, the game should work fine with these older sims, albeit not as accurately as with sims who have the full DNA structure.

But I guess you guys are sticklers for genetic accuracy, so have fun!
Yes, I for one, am a stickler for accuracy. It's just too wierd to a skintone 1 and skintone 2 or 3 sim couple to have a skintone 4 baby or even a skintone 1 and an alien skintone couple (Jenny and PT9) to have skintone 4 babies!

MaxoidTom

13th Sep 2005, 12:41 AM

But we do get the "lullaby" music, so we know that a baby is on the way although we don't get the performance lag then. Was this intended to just be a more subtle indication? I always know when my sims get pregnant.

The dialog that shows up during labor is meant to let the user know that it will take a while. We did not want to take that hit at the time of "conception." Putting up a dialog then would've been a bigger clue and didn't seem to fit in the flow as well as during labor--which most people think of as time-consuming and painful already.

Inge Jones

13th Sep 2005, 07:53 AM

IgnorantBliss

13th Sep 2005, 08:37 AM

I would have thought having the genetics decided at birth as it is now was more useful to more players, as I know that loads of people save just before birth and replay the birth over and over until they get the sex of baby they want, or twins, or what have you.

I agree, it gives us some control over the gender and genetics. Although I don't think repeating the birth will give you twins no matter how many times you try if the original birth was single, or vice versa, it seems the twins are decided earlier than birth.

Inge Jones

13th Sep 2005, 08:40 AM

Lol that gives me an idea - when twins are conceived, the lullaby jingle should sound twice in case we want to reload the lot and try for the baby again :)

MaxoidTom

13th Sep 2005, 08:46 AM

DNA is bound by neighbor id and to have a neighbor id means you need to have a real character. Creating a character takes a bit of time unfortunately, so it is all delayed until labor.

Really, there isn't much of a difference DNA-wise if we determine what traits are inherited at conception or during labor, unless of course the "other" parent gets lost. I can see how it would be useful for those who are very particular about their sims, but this particular section of game code was not made or intended for modders to modify in such a way (hindsight is always 20/20).

Having twins is unrelated to the DNA--that is stored in an inventory token upon conception and can be modified before labor. Really, it's that easy. Change the 3rd (or 4th, can't remember off the top of my head) property from 1 to 2 for the appropriate token.

Morphar

13th Sep 2005, 09:06 AM

Don't look now, but I just discovered that the genetics in Veronaville are just as messed up as in Strangetown!

I made the same observation yesterday.

Again there're only 4 characters that don't have missing DNA lines. :( I've not experimented w/having babies yet to see if any of them crash the game though. So far, all I've done was added line 6 as the last line in the DNA for skintone for all of them.

Don't forget the 298435462 line!! I think it is only the combination "half alien"+"no code human" that crashes the game. I have not played Veronaville/Pleasantview. Can you do the abduction there too?

I'm almost afraid to look at Pleasantview characters!

It seems Pleasantview is OK. I used SimPE to go through the whole DNA list.

Inge Jones

13th Sep 2005, 09:15 AM

Change the 3rd (or 4th, can't remember off the top of my head) property from 1 to 2 for the appropriate token.

/me kisses Tom

Morphar

13th Sep 2005, 09:44 AM

The DNA structure was changed to include the "expressed skintone" gene near the end of the project, to fully accomodate custom content. However, some characters were not remade, since it was deemed too risky at the point in the project. Still, the game should work fine with these older sims, albeit not as accurately as with sims who have the full DNA structure.

But I guess you guys are sticklers for genetic accuracy, so have fun!

I would not care too much about the genetic accuracy if it wasn't beacause Maxis claims in the ad that it is one of the features. To have the game crash because of it is another thing. What is really the problem when mixing a "half alien" with "human without code"? You said earlier that there was a "fall back" to take care of that. Why isn't it working then?
I appreciate though that the game tells that it has crashed. Very nice message to a young girl that have spent a lot of time without saving.

Inge Jones

13th Sep 2005, 09:49 AM

Very nice message to a young girl that have spent a lot of time without saving.

Sorry if this sounds unsympathetic, but the first lesson anyone who uses a computer learns - whether they use it for business or gaming - is to SAVE FREQUENTLY :)

MaxoidTom

13th Sep 2005, 09:54 AM

I would not care too much about the genetic accuracy if it wasn't beacause Maxis claims in the ad that it is one of the features. To have the game crash because of it is another thing. What is really the problem when mixing a "half alien" with "human without code"? You said earlier that there was a "fall back" to take care of that. Why isn't it working then?
I appreciate though that the game tells that it has crashed. Very nice message to a young girl that have spent a lot of time without saving.

Are these shipping sims? Please give me more details and I'll see what I can do about reproducing the crash. This thread is a bit long to try to figure out what combination of sims causes crashes...

Morphar

13th Sep 2005, 02:15 PM

Are these shipping sims? Please give me more details and I'll see what I can do about reproducing the crash. This thread is a bit long to try to figure out what combination of sims causes crashes...

The combination below crashes the game at the time of birth. The crash is consistent and repeatable.
ET is the half-alien son of Pascal Curious. Erin is Erin Singles in Singles family.
The crash is verified by me and Sonshine.
I have also verified that the same thing happens with a female half-alien and Johnny Smith.

The crash will NOT occur if the Erin/Johnny code for skintone is "repaired" OR if the
DNA code for the aliens is changed from:

6 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46

to:
6 (dtString) = 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

The crash will also occur if Erin is exchanged to her sister Kristen. Only difference is that it will take more trials. .

ET N002_user0062 Instance 0x00000171

1 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
2 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46
298435457 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435458 (dtString) = 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435459 (dtString) = 2d6830c5-0b7c-48a1-9c55-4bd9cc873b0f
298435461 (dtString) =
298435462 (dtString) = 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
3 (dtString) = 12d4f3e1-fdbe-4fe7-ace3-46dd9ff52b51
5 (dtString) = mouth,eyes,
6 (dtString) = 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46

Erika(Erin) N002_user0153

1 (dtString) = 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
2 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435457 (dtString) = 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435458 (dtString) = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
298435459 (dtString) = 51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7
298435461 (dtString) =
3 (dtString) = 51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7
4 (dtString) = -858851246:2140914850:1;
5 (dtString) = nose,brow,cheek,jaw,

MaxoidTom

13th Sep 2005, 08:59 PM

Thank you Morphar. There was indeed a bug and I'm working on a fix. You are correct that an empty expressed skintone (0x10000006 and 0x00000006) may cause some problems. I will have it fall back on the expressed skintone in these cases.

Sonshine

13th Sep 2005, 09:36 PM

Don't forget the 298435462 line!! I think it is only the combination "half alien"+"no code human" that crashes the game. I have not played Veronaville/Pleasantview.

I checked all of the characters that I changed and they all have line name 4 which has this neg number: -858851246:2142692648:1;. I tried some combination births and none crashed the game. I think you only need linename 298435462 when linename 4 isn't present. Like I said, none of the births crashed the game. Juliet had twins and one had fair skin after her and the other had med skin after Romeo so, it must work. I suppose I *could* add linename 298435462 to their genetics, but right now I really don't feel like it, lol. I've not tried any alien combinations.

Can you do the abduction there too?
Yes, you can have alien abductions in Veronaville also. If you're impatient, you can either use the boolprop cheat and shift/click on the big telescope or you can d/l the always get abducted hack. They both work. Otherwise, there is the standard .05% chance of getting abducted the natural way.

Morphar

14th Sep 2005, 02:06 PM

I suppose I *could* add linename 298435462 to their genetics, but right now I really don't feel like it, lol. I've not tried any alien combinations.

I understand completely how you feel ;-)
I think that when MaxoidTom now is convinced about the crash problem he will come back to his senses and solve the "not so good fallback solution" in the other cases too.

Yes, you can have alien abductions in Veronaville also.

I looked into these hoods but I think the aliens do not fit in the other scenarios but in Strangetown. In Strangetown they are what it's all about and there it is important that the genetics for alien skintone works.

HeartDeco

15th Sep 2005, 06:38 AM

OK. Reasonable but not very realistic. In an answer from MaxoidTom in this thread I read that things are set at the time of birth. There are probably reasons for that although I don't see why.

I don't know their reasons either, but it could be the result of the type of programming code they use and the way they nest the events. Many people have said they will exit without saving at the time of birth over and over, until they get the baby/genetics they want. I have not done this myself since the game is rather sensitive, as we all know, I did not want to push the envelope.

In reference to what Rainbow said - over at Variousimmers, with Pescado, we compared results on Brandi with other Sims that had been self-pollinated and the results were consistent. I did two with Don Lothario and two with KayLynn and with the Caliente sisters I impregnated them with each other. I did one with Brandi, after Skip was resurrected and I did one with Mortimer and Bella's ghost, before she was resurrected. The difference with Skip is that there were two Skip files, one with DNA and one without, same with Michael Bachelor. Apparently the game was intentionally programmed to point to the 'unSkip' file for this one pregnancy of Brandi. Had it been Dina Caliente and Michael Bachelor instead, most likely the same results would have occurred, since it appeared to be set up the same way, possibly as an alternative storyline. With the Maxis playable characters certain events are guaranteed through hard coding in the program, like the Caliente sisters getting robbed early in the game and Dina always having a set of twins, usually with her first pregnancy.

When only one parent is alive at birth and if there is incomplete data to 'check' for the other parent, the birth defaults to the DNA of the one parent and is treated as self-pollination. As Rainbow said, this is why Brandi always has a boy with her hair color. Self-pollination with either the TofL&D or whatever means is used will always default to the one parent and the offspring will always be the opposite sex and with similar coloring, depending on the Mother's genes. If it is a Maxis made Sim, it is anyone's guess as to the inheritable traits and they should not be depended on as a genetic factor. Look at Alexander Goth. He has paler skin than even Mortimer, but the darker skin is dominant. Since no one in Mortimer's tree appears to be other than #1 or #2 skintone and Bella's appear to be mostly #2 and #3, then according to the laws of genetics, Alexander should have been dark like Cassandra or at least a #2 skintone.

So, according to MaxiodTom, Alien skintone is dominant over all the other Maxis skins and is considered just as any custom skin would be. And as has already been mentioned, you should only have the alien eyes with green skin according to the normal genetic game code. That's why alien impregnations from abductions always result in green babies. The babies may have more human features, but in all likelihood they will have the black eyes. I have not checked abduction pregnancies using a custom 'normal' skin, but it would be worthwhile to see the results.

As I understand now, with all that has been said here, CAS characters have no inherited genes and assuming both parents are CAS, then their born in game offspring should be predictable within the expected parameters of genetics. If both parents were off the same Maxis skintone and one had Maxis brown eyes and one had the Maxis dark blue than the child could have either eye color with the same skintone as both parents. If the other parent had the Maxis light blue, grey or green eyes instead of the dark blue, than the child should always have the Maxis brown eyes.

Coming back to the oddities in genetics with the Maxis made Sims, I don't know that they were due to sloppy programming or that they were intentionally made this way to make the game more interesting. However, when something interesting does happen, this seems to have a negative impact on the game itself. This is where programming strategy should be scrutinized with a solution to every possible scenario, if they are going to monkey with the genetic code of the pre-made Sims. I do feel they are responsible for not thinking things through, but this takes time and money.

HeartDeco

Edit: Mortimer is a #1 skintone, not a #2. I was thinking of Michael Bachelor by mistake.

rainbow

15th Sep 2005, 07:02 AM

Actually, none of the 4 regular skintones are dominant, unlike eye and hair color. Rather sims can express any skintone within the range of tones received from each parent. Therefore, if a sim receives S1 from Mom and S4 from Dad, she can be S1, S2, S3, or S4. If parents are S1 and S2, then she can be either S1 or S2. Lilith and Dirk Dreamer had 4 children in my game, and one was S4. The others were S3. I ressurected Bella, and she and Mortimer had another son. He was S2 with brown hair, which was Mortimer's genetic haircolor. Only Alien and custom skins have dominance.

IgnorantBliss

15th Sep 2005, 07:12 AM

IAlien skintone is dominant over all the other Maxis skins and is considered just as any custom skin would be. And as has already been mentioned, you should only have the alien eyes with green skin according to the normal genetic game code. That's why alien impregnations from abductions always result in green babies.
HeartDeco

This is not completely true. As discussed earlier in this same topic, the alien skintone is only dominant if one of the parents is homozygous to the green skin tone. With non-hacked abductions and no custom skins present, the baby will always have green skin since the Pollination Tech is homozygous to it. However, if one parent has one gene for the alien skin tone and another for a regular Maxis skintone, while the other parent has two genes for a regular Maxis skintone, their children have only a 25% chance of expressing the alien tone, not 50%. All their children have a 50% chance of inheriting the green skintone, and when they do, there is a 50% chance they will express it. So, the alien skintone is not completely similar to custom skintones in this regard. This has been tested vigorously by myself with consistent results.

And none of the four regular Maxis skintones are dominant over each other, as stated in the previous post. The reason some of the Maxis created sims appear to have unusual genetics is because they were created in CAS, not born in game. Brandi's and Skip real genetic children could not express blonde hair, for example, since Brandi's dominant hair color would hide the blonde color from skip.

HeartDeco

15th Sep 2005, 08:28 AM

Actually, none of the 4 regular skintones are dominant, unlike eye and hair color...Only Alien and custom skins have dominance.

So, that being true, than I wonder why the inheritable skin traits are tracked at all from the parents? Is it just to allow then for Alien/Custom skin introductions? That doesn't follow genetic reasoning at all and I was thinking that Maxis used that as a model. The traits inherited from the grandparents would only be an indirect factor for effecting the expressed skintone that Mortimer has and the skintone that Bella has. I was thinking that Mortimer was a #2, but he's a #1 and Bella is a #3, then that would allow for Alexander's skintone giving him a 1-in-3 chance. It is disappointing to know that inheritable traits does not extend past the first generation in the same sense that the other genetic properties do. It seems to me then that Maxis intended for custom content to replace the originals and that the Maxis made properties were just 'placeholders'.

Thanks Rainbow. BTW just for fun I linked KayLynn as the daughter of Mortimer and Nighat Caliente, Nina's and Dina's mother. Since KayLynn was about the only one who had not dallied with Mortimer, she fit in nicely as half-sister to the Goths and the Calientes. So goes the drama in Pleasantview.

HeartDeco

IgnorantBliss

15th Sep 2005, 09:06 AM

The inheriting of the skin tones also does not work the way it's explained in the guide. With the four regular Maxis skintones, sims will only pass on their expressed skintone regardless of what they inherited from their parents (A sim who got genes for S1 and S3 from his parents and expresses S2 can only pass on S2 to his own kids.) So, technically the DNA info for the inherited skintone seems unnecessary in these cases, although it is still interesting to know those things when you peak into the sims' genetics.

I wouldn't say that Maxis meant the the four regular skintones only as placeholders, though. I still prefer the genetics of them to the custom skintone inheritance, which can only ever result in one or the other, not a "mixture".

HeartDeco

15th Sep 2005, 10:08 AM

Custom content takes precedence over Maxis genetics, unless of course the custom content gene wasn't passed down (50% chance for each gene). As for facial distortions, we did or best, but morphing two faces together and trying to come up with something "attractive" versus accurate is very hard programmatically speaking.

Alien skintone was meant to act like custom content. The fact that the normal Maxis skintones look like "1, 2, 3, 4" was for backwards compatibility with some systems when we refactored it. Make no mistake, aliens were in the game from a very early point and were not "thrown in" as it were.

Baby DNA is decided at time of creation, because, well, the sim does not exist on disk yet. From the game's point of view, it isn't a real sim until it pops out of the plumb bob, so of course it wouldn't have any dna yet. This has no religious or any other meaning, it's just so that the game doesn't lag after woohoo, giving the user an indication that a baby is on the way--the performance hit is taken when giving birth.

Actually, none of the 4 regular skintones are dominant...Only Alien and custom skins have dominance.

This is not completely true. As discussed earlier in this same topic, the alien skintone is only dominant if one of the parents is homozygous to the green skin tone. With non-hacked abductions and no custom skins present, the baby will always have green skin since the Pollination Tech is homozygous to it. However, if one parent has one gene for the alien skin tone and another for a regular Maxis skintone, while the other parent has two genes for a regular Maxis skintone, their children have only a 25% chance of expressing the alien tone, not 50%. All their children have a 50% chance of inheriting the green skintone, and when they do, there is a 50% chance they will express it. So, the alien skintone is not completely similar to custom skintones in this regard. This has been tested vigorously by myself with consistent results.

And none of the four regular Maxis skintones are dominant over each other, as stated in the previous post. The reason some of the Maxis created sims appear to have unusual genetics is because they were created in CAS, not born in game. Brandi's and Skip real genetic children could not express blonde hair, for example, since Brandi's dominant hair color would hide the blonde color from skip.

OK, for clarification, I am referring to the Maxis created Sims as the pre-made Sims that shipped with the game and everyone else was discussing and comparing how they have whacky genetics from looking at their DNA profiles in SimPE. I assumed they were referring to Maxis original character skins and not custom skins, except where the Alien skins were concerned. Are you identifying the Sims that shipped with the game as being created randomly in CAS and this is why their expressed genes are whacky? I can certainly see that and yes within a family thrown together with CAS. The code itself should not be whacky though and that's what everyone is talking about - lines missing or left blank and incorrect number values.

I understand real life genetics well and I can accept the part about the four Maxis skintones being of equal genetic value. But, in reading what everyone is saying, only the actual skintone that is expressed in each parent is the one that matters at the time of their baby's birth. The only part the grandparents played was in contributing their skintone value to each parent of the baby - the baby gets nothing directly from the grandparents - no recessive traits anyway like in true genetics. And if the four skintones are equal in genetic value, than there can't be actual inheritable* traits past one generation, except with the Alien skin which, according to MaxiodTom, would be dominant over the other four skin values. If this is the case then only the Alien skintone would ever be passed down once it was introduced into the pool.

OK - that's my serve - Anyone else?

HeartDeco

*Edit to add: Unless the parents have the same skintone or one parent has the skintone right next to it as in 1&2, 2&3, 3&4.