Sim Genetics

[Rachel]

Ok, so apparently the genetics system in TS3 is much less advanced than TS2. I haven't noticed this much myself, as very few of my Sim offspring even make it to the teenage stage, and the kids and toddlers all seem to pretty much look the same anyway! But for future reference, I have a few questions about the genetics systems in your games.

Do your Sim children look like their parents or older siblings? How often do you get a mutation (i.e. a hair or eye colour that's not already part of the household)? Do your Sims ever inherit the genetics of a grandparent or more distant relative?

I've seen a few genetics related options in Twallan's Story Progression and Master Controller and was wondering if and how you've tweaked these? What kind of changes do these mods make and what settings would I need to improve the genetics system?

Sorry for all the questions! Seeing genetics being passed through the family line was always one of my favourite parts of TS2, and I loved waiting for a child to age up so I could see who they looked like!

[Ninoo]

Sometimes I have the grand mother genes passed down to grand children, mostly hair color. But most of the time as soon as the kid is a toddler, I open edit in CAS, age to young adult and start to edit the ugly away then age down and save That was totally unhelpful.

I know someone posted a mod that changed some values, it was as Twoftmama's forum but I have no idea where exactly. To keep with the "family feeling" I always try to give to the child one trait from each parents :3

[ATS Sandy]

Well, I can't say anything about grand-parents genes, right now!

But I have nothing to complain about with the genes transmission, so far. I don't think all the toddlers look alike, but it's true that they have softer features than their parents, and if their parents have nothing special (typically this default NPC face...), then the kids won't have nothing special neither, and will look more like his little neighbor.
I authorize myself to tweak a bit a kid in CAS, because I have some Sims who have facial structure influenced by time & life. Iris, for example, is a tired college professor, but there's no reason her kids look like tired professor at 8, so I regive them a little bit more cheeks.
I don't think Guillaume will have kids, but same thing with him. If he add kids, I'll have to tweak them a bit. It's obviously life that gave him this junkie face. It wouldn't be anything on babies.

Now that I think about it, I don't have neither kids that are the portraits of their parents. I have fun at guessing who are the parents of a Sim just by looking at him, at Sullivan (Sims 2 blog), and, right now, I don't think it's possible in my game (I write "right now", because once Christophe's kids will age up, I promise anyone will be able to say he's the father! )
I watched the pictures of my Sims and of their kids, and none of the Evard kids have inherited of Ameline's eyes. I might have tweaked Annie when she was a kid (she was my first kid created in game, and Ben is the first kid born in game), I don't remember...
I was very pleased to see that the Legaufret twins had inherited of their mother's and father's hair color.

Well, I don't have enough experience to talk about this! I had read somewhere that the genetics had been modified at some point, and I guess that all the kids born since then are still toddlers or kids in my game...


Last thing to add before I shut my mouth: in the Sims 2, toddlers and kids didn't have as smoothed features as in the Sims 3, but in my Sims 2 games, it ended up by giving birth to real monsters, who were eventually cute as teenages, but gosh, what awful toddlers and kids they could be. (I repeat: in my games, I don't speak for Sims 2 kids in general! I was doomed with Sims 2!)

[TeacupSonia]

I know I've had problems with genetics. Especially pets. When my border collie and boxer had puppies, two of the four got neither of the parents' traits, all their features in CAS were dead-center in the sliders. It drove me mad. They were generic-default/preset #1 game dogs, with the dad's coat. Also sometimes genetics seem to push past the parents, if that makes any sense. For example, when Jay and Benni had kids, their daughter got Benni's extreme cheekbones and angular cheeks/jaw. Except when she grew up, the daughter's features were even MORE exaggerated. Same with the dogs, rather than getting the long border collie face or the shortened boxer face, or something in the middle, the OTHER two puppies (4 fail puppies in all. They were all awful.) had shortened faces that were SO shortened that they looked really glitchy. As in the muzzle was almost back inside of the skull, and the teeth showed through the face. They were things of nightmares, really...

Of the four kids that Jay and Benni have had, one looks JUST like the father but with the mom's coloring, one is a more extreme version of the mom, one looks like a mix of the two, sort of the mom's features on the dad's face, which was a relief, and the last is sort of the dad's face with the mom's eyes. Except he got weird hair, the mom's blonde but with weird grey brown streaks. It was disgusting! I changed it to pink in the end...

I'm not sure if they can get grandparents genes, but that would make sense. Beth was born with brown hair, which neither of the parents had, but her grandmother was a brunette. With this game, I can't tell if it's genetics from past generations, or just glitchy randomness. It's hard to tell sometimes.

If there is a mod to make smoother genetics mixing, I know I would be interested. I think I've heard Awesome Mod has something like that, I think? I don't use it though because testingcheatsenabled and NRaas mods do everything I need plus way extra.

[Ninoo]

ugh pets genetics are awful, just... I can't ;__; I tried to breed cute cats and it gave me monsters!!

[jenny]

Does AM fix this?? I thought I read that it did....

[Ninoo]

I don't know if and how it fix this, by monsters I mean cats that you can't see in real life, like a fluffy cat with a skinny body and a big head, or the coat with weird colors/patterns :/

[jenny]

(04-10-2012 02:38 AM)Ninoo Wrote:  I don't know if and how it fix this, by monsters I mean cats that you can't see in real life, like a fluffy cat with a skinny body and a big head, or the coat with weird colors/patterns :/

ah, I see...
I actually haven't bred pets yet.......

[TeacupSonia]

Ninoo: Part of why I got a boxer was because I thought boxer/border collie puppies would be adorable. Instead I also got monsters. They looked like my game was malfunctioning...

[Jenba]

I'm interested in this question, too, because the last time I played over multiple generations in Sims 3 (over a year ago), all of my kids turned out to be clones of their parents, at least face-structure-wise. The girls always looked like their dads, and the boys always looked like their moms. No fun!

The hair/eye color seemed to jump around, and sometimes I even got a weird random color, like the third gen heir being born with violet eyes, when none of his ancestors had violet.

In the past year, I've had exactly 1 child born in-game, and she's still a child, so I don't know which parent she'll look like. I think she looks like her mom, but with her dad's coloring. I'm afraid to age her up and check it out because her mom is Honey Darnell.

I've never played with the genetics options in Twallan's mods, so I just have all mine set to the default. Here are options I found in Story Progression, just for reference (they're all under Options: Pregnancy):

Quote:Advanced Genetics
When enabled, a series of advanced blending options are activated
Default: True
Module: Extra StoryProgression NEW
Hidden by: "Genetic Skin Blending" = False

Blend Mutation Chance
Defines the chance that a mutation will occur during facial inheritance blending
Default: 5
Module: Extra StoryProgression NEW
Hidden by: "Advanced Genetics" = False

Blend Mutation Travel
Defines the maximum travel allowed from the inherited value when a mutation occurs
Default: -0.1 : 0.1
Module: Extra StoryProgression NEW
Hidden by: "Blend Mutation Chance" = 0

Genetic Skin Blending
As seen in Awesome, this will enable an improved approach to inherited skin tones, over the EAxian approach
Default: True
Module: Extra StoryProgression NEW

However, I am not sure if all of that applies to babies born to active Sims, or just Inactives. (since Story Progression is mostly used to handle inactives)