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Mad Poster
Original Poster
#1 Old 19th Nov 2014 at 6:55 PM
Default Alien skin ONLY if parent gets abducted..?
I would like my Sims, to only be born with the alien skin, if their dad got pregnant with an alien abduction. Easy enough...
For now, it seems that my alien skinned sim would just give birth to alien skinned offspring. The alien skin must be coded to be quite inevitable.
But this does not suit my gameplay and idea of how it should be..if this was even realistic. lol
If i see an alien sim in town, I want to be sure that this sim had his dad abducted, and also be sure that one of his parent is the PT.
In short..this is what I'd like.

How would i go about editing, modding my alien default skin replacement?

Je mange des girafes et je parle aussi français !...surtout :0)

Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
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Née whiterider
retired moderator
#2 Old 19th Nov 2014 at 11:21 PM
Well, the problem is that non-geneticised skins always take precedence over geneticised skins. This is also why, if you have non-default CC skintones, a sim pairing where one sim has the CC skin and one has a maxis skin will always produce babies with the CC skin, unless you or the creator geneticised the CC skin.

So one solution - the one I use - is to geneticise your alien skintones. I have mine geneticised right at the edges of the spectrum, so my palest human skin is something like 0.8 and my pale alien skins are 0.5, or something. I do the same thing at the other end of the spectrum for my dark alien skins. That way, your sims' babies will get a random skin between the alien skin and the maxis skin in your geneticised spectrum; some of them will get the alien skintone, but most of them won't.

This method is a bit flawed if you have a multi-PT mod with more than two alien skintones since, especially if you don't have many geneticised human skintones, there's a chance that alien babies' babies will get the skintone of the other PT from the one they're related to. This hasn't happened to me yet because I have about 20 geneticised human skintones, and that makes the chances low enough that if it ever does happen, I'll be happy to pass it off as a random mutation . But I don't know if that would be more of a problem for you.

If you'd like more info on genetics and geneticising CC, including skintones, have a look at this amazing guide: http://rikkulidea.livejournal.com/21779.html

What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#3 Old 20th Nov 2014 at 3:24 AM Last edited by Rosebine : 20th Nov 2014 at 4:38 AM.
Thank you for your reply. I will look into it, the link you posted. But to be honest..this is foreign language to me!
I have no PT mod, no mod related to alien at all.
I just saw a default replacement alien skin, and thought it was nicer. It is MM.
All I want is to limit the alien skin to direct descendant of Mister PT.
I would need to give the alien skin such value, that it is never used unless abduction happens...is this possible?
I should read that link before asking anything else huh?

Ok...this was very interesting reading.
The tutorial for changing genetic values also, but where do i find the Skin Tone XML of the Maxis alien skin?
This is what I need to edit.
Not the Maxis textures or the default textures found in the CC I have which obviously, contains only textures, and no Skin Tone XML.

All tutorials I found shows you what to do to turn a custom skin into a default..this i already know how. Extracting/switching textures is a piece of cake.
But if i want to change how the alien skin works in my game, (regardless of the textures it uses)..I'd need to know where to find the XML file(s)

Thank you.

Je mange des girafes et je parle aussi français !...surtout :0)

Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
Née whiterider
retired moderator
#4 Old 20th Nov 2014 at 1:13 PM
Huh, now I want to make a bunch of mixed skintones using my human skins as bases with the alien details and markings from my alien skintones. Thanks for the inspiration .

So, looking at the CC skintones I have, it looks like the easiest-to-spot similarity between the textures and the Skintone XML is the Group. So this what I would do:
1. Open up your default replacement alien skintone, and make a note of the Group for the textures. They should all have the same one.
2. At the bottom of the SimPE window, click Finder.
3. In the Find: dropdown, pick TGI Search.
4. Copy the Group from the textures into the Group box; and in the Type box, fill in 0x4C158081 (this is the type for Skin Tone XMLs, I lifted it from a random non-default skintone)
5. Hit Start, and wait. And wait. And wait .
6. Eventually Finder should give you results, hopefully, of just the alien Skin Tone XML. It will also tell you which file that resource is in, so you can open that file up in SimPE and find the resource using the Filter Resources tab. (I would search myself and tell you which file it's in, but I don't think my computer would like me for using Finder with the game running )
7. Once you've found the resource, extract it, make a new file, import the resource and make the changes according to the tutorial.

Hopefully this all works out as well in reality as it does in my head .

What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#5 Old 20th Nov 2014 at 1:34 PM
Typing Group number and type you provided, didn't give any results...or maybe I am doing this wrong.
*Goes back for more research.*
Thank you.

Je mange des girafes et je parle aussi français !...surtout :0)

Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
Née whiterider
retired moderator
#6 Old 20th Nov 2014 at 2:07 PM
Hmm. You haven't got basegame unticked in your SimPE preferences -> File Table, have you?

What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#7 Old 20th Nov 2014 at 2:15 PM Last edited by Rosebine : 22nd Nov 2014 at 3:29 AM.
Nevah! Everything I made/make, if possible, is cloned from base game.

Ok found it.
Skins.package...(duh! lol)
my SimPE is in french unfortunately, but..under skin color, 7 files XML in there.
The Sims 2 Deluxe/Base/TSData/Res/Catalog/Skins/Skins.package.
Well yeah, me has Deluxe.

Let the experimentationZ beginz.

EDIT again.
I just come to think, my project may not work at all, XML editing or not.
My problems has nothing to do with genetic values!
Whether parents are Alien/Sim, Sim/Sim, offspring are dealt with the same way.
A sim born from PT/Sim, has equal chances of giving birth to an alien skin tone baby, as PT has...
If I edit the XML in a way that it won't show up at all in my game for non-abducted offspring who have one parent wearing the alien skin, I will also end up hiding it for the ones i want the alien skin for : abducted's offspring.

In short, if I figure out a value for the alien skin to never show up when paired to a non-alien skin tone...I also stop PT to ever conceive green alien babies, unless the sim using the telescope is also..an alien.
Yuk..having babies with your own child?

Hard...

Je mange des girafes et je parle aussi français !...surtout :0)

Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
Mad Poster
#8 Old 22nd Nov 2014 at 10:56 AM
I think then that the only way to do what you want would be to leave the skin alone and edit manually. When you have a baby born to an alien/non alien couple, roll a dice and calculate the chance they should have alien skin. If they roll for non alien skin, then go into SimPE and change the genetics, so that the skintone comes from the non-alien parent, but the recessive is the alien skin tone.

Or the other way around, make the alien skin genetic, but when a sim is abducted go into SimPE and manually change the baby's skin to the alien skin tone.

Both ways will mess up any birth screenshots because the baby will have the wrong skin.

I use the sims as a psychology simulator...
Née whiterider
retired moderator
#9 Old 22nd Nov 2014 at 11:16 AM
Hum. It's interesting you say that, because I have all my alien skintones geneticised, and my alien babies have all got alien skintones so far. I wonder if the alien impregnation routine doesn't use the same code as the regular conception one, so it somehow forces the alien skin?

What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#10 Old 22nd Nov 2014 at 7:33 PM
Geneticised the alien skin would mean to give it a value else than 0, and between 0.1 to 0.9..is this right?
But then Nysha did, and it seems to not have stoped the alien babies to be green. Which is wonderful...But still not perfect for what I am wanting to do.
I'd like to find a way to force the alien skin for all PT's babies, but stop it completely, if PT is not the parent.
The thing is, the infant skin is the same, or in the same bundle/set as all the other ages. So when a green sim is found old enough to have babies, that same skin can be inherited.
How about...making the game switch from on set of skin, to another as the sim grows older/age to teen..let's say?
I am dreaming huh...

Je mange des girafes et je parle aussi français !...surtout :0)

Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
Mad Poster
#11 Old 23rd Nov 2014 at 10:49 AM
No, you don't want to geneticise it between 0.1 and 0.9, because then a normal human-human couple could generate an alien skin baby. You need to put it at one end of the spectrum, so either less than 0.1 (0.01 - 0.09) or over 0.9 - you can even make it over 1 if you like.

You can make a custom skin which changes colour from one age stage to the next but that would be the same for all sims who have it. You can't switch sims' skintones halfway through their life without a lot of fiddling around.

There's no way to force the skin for PT but prevent it for other sims. That's not how skin tones work in this game.

I use the sims as a psychology simulator...
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#12 Old 23rd Nov 2014 at 8:18 PM
Quote: Originally posted by simsfreq
No, you don't want to geneticise it between 0.1 and 0.9, because then a normal human-human couple could generate an alien skin baby. You need to put it at one end of the spectrum, so either less than 0.1 (0.01 - 0.09) or over 0.9 - you can even make it over 1 if you like.

You can make a custom skin which changes colour from one age stage to the next but that would be the same for all sims who have it. You can't switch sims' skintones halfway through their life without a lot of fiddling around.

There's no way to force the skin for PT but prevent it for other sims. That's not how skin tones work in this game.


By switching skin ton set, I didn't mean another color..I meant switching to an identical-looking alien skin set, that would have 0 chances to be inherited.
But as you said, this is impossible unless fiddling a lot is done. me not there yet!
Thank you for the skin values precision.
So my best guess would be to make it hard to get, and then sim surgeryzed all PT's babies who would be born with a normal skin, so they are green.

Je mange des girafes et je parle aussi français !...surtout :0)

Find all my old MTS Uploads, on my SFS, And all new uploads Here . :)
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