Expressed Appearance vs SimDNA...Technical Help Needed
IcemanSimmer:
Background Information:
I started a new family recently (male + female) but for the first time ever, I decided to use custom created sims which I had grabbed from MTS2. These sims included custom skin, eyes, hair, etc. Within the game they looked fantastic. A couple of days ago, I got the female pregnant. When she gave birth, my horror story started. The male baby had eye shadow, pink lipstick and 4 eyebrows!!! Something was definitely not right here. To test what might be going on, I used Insimenator to make the female pregnant, give immidiate birth, and then age the offspring to adulthood. In all six tests, the resulting offspring was a mess. After further research, I realized the offending culprit were the custom skin packages, especially the female's. Her skin package had eyebrows, eyeshadow, and lipstick "embedded" into it. I have attached to this post the skin image which I extrated using SimPE.
Now I was in a dilema. I wanted the two custom sims to retain all their custom features but not be able to pass them on to their offsprings. I spent quite a few hours researching the issue of Sim DNA here on MATY and on MTS2. From what I had gathered, a sim's expressed appearance, as shown within the game, is stored in "Age Data" while what is passed to their offspring is stored in "Sim DNA". Using SimPE, I left the "Age Data" untouched but altered their "Sim DNA" to remove all reference to custom features and replace them with default Maxis values.
For the male, I set the eye color to 32dee745-b6ce-419f-9e86-ae93802d2682 (brown), skintone to 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 (light), hair color to 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 (brown).
For the female, eyes are e43f3360-3a08-4755-8b83-a0d37a6c424b (light blue), skintone is 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 (light), hair color is 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 (blonde).
Once these changes were in place, I fired up the game and immidiately noticed that my two sims looked distinctly "bland" and lost all their "vibrance". A closer look at the female showed that she no longer had eyebrows, lipstick, or eyeshadow. It was quite clear that the game was no longer using their custom skin. It seems changing their "Sim DNA" has also changed their expressed appearance (which is completly opposite to what I had researched).
Since I was already in the game, I decided to do some gene testing on my altered sims to see what the results would be. Using Insim again, I did 10 test cases. In all 10 cases, the resulting offspring had default Maxis features which is great.
Now for my questions...
Question #1: Is it possible to have the parent sims use custom features but not pass them to their offspring? If it can be done, how since my method resulted in the parents losing "customness" yet having offspring the way I want them.
Question #2: In my 2nd Insim test, all 10 offsprings had brown hair / brown eyes (inherited from the father). None of them had blonde hair / blue eyes. Looking at the 10 DNA profiles, all had brown / brown as dominant and blonde / blue as reccessive. Do certain colors have a higher genetic probabilty ie. brown hair > blonde hair and brown eyes > blue eyes?
Question #3: Under "Sim DNA" there is something called "Facial Features". This determines what characteristics can be passed down like mouth, chin, cheek, etc. Does anyone have a complete listing of all the parameters for this field? This is handy so that certain unwanted features don't get passed down the genetic line.
My apologies for the rather long post here but I feel the more info I give, the better the advice I will receive.
Thanks in advance.
J. M. Pescado:
Quote from: IcemanSimmer on 2008 January 14, 08:16:29
Question #1: Is it possible to have the parent sims use custom features but not pass them to their offspring? If it can be done, how since my method resulted in the parents losing "customness" yet having offspring the way I want them.
Changing eye or hair genetics has no effect on the sim's current appearance. Changing the skintone line takes effect immediately. Custom skins are made of 100% pure evil.
Quote from: IcemanSimmer on 2008 January 14, 08:16:29
Question #2: In my 2nd Insim test, all 10 offsprings had brown hair / brown eyes (inherited from the father). None of them had blonde hair / blue eyes. Looking at the 10 DNA profiles, all had brown / brown as dominant and blonde / blue as reccessive. Do certain colors have a higher genetic probabilty ie. brown hair > blonde hair and brown eyes > blue eyes?
Like in real life, some genetic attributes are "recessive". Recessive attributes will be carried by sims that do not actually express them and may reappear in grandchildren.
Quote from: IcemanSimmer on 2008 January 14, 08:16:29
Question #3: Under "Sim DNA" there is something called "Facial Features". This determines what characteristics can be passed down like mouth, chin, cheek, etc. Does anyone have a complete listing of all the parameters for this field? This is handy so that certain unwanted features don't get passed down the genetic line.
Doesn't work that way. The unwanted features still have a chance of passing on, and the only way to make sure this does not happen is to generate your intended spawn in a CAS test and then replace the LXNR manually. This is most likely beyond your ability to do.
Dea:
I always create a sim with a Maxis hairstyle or custom hairstyle that is properly binned. If I want a sim to have a custom binned hairstyle I change it later. Otherwise everyone in the family for a couple of generations will have the same hairstyle.
You can change custom hair, skin, and eyes to act more Maxis-like with Simpe or Wardrobe Wrangler. A link to Wardrobe Wrangler is a couple or so threads down.
Strangel:
Quote from: Dea on 2008 January 14, 09:10:06
Otherwise everyone in the family for a couple of generations will have the same hairstyle.
I learned that one the hard way.. lol I was new to Sims. This was before hair binning became a big deal, so you generally had Maxis Black, Maxis Brown, Maxis Red, Maxis Blonde, Custom Content. I made a female CAS with a CC hair, and now god knows how many generations later, those genes are floating in countless families. I wish there were a simple way to do a "search & destroy/replace" function in SimPE, but if I wanted to kill it off, I'd have to root through just about every sim's profile to see who'd gotten the genes. So.. I just ignore it.
IcemanSimmer:
Thanks for the quick reply JM :)
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2008 January 14, 08:43:06
Changing eye or hair genetics has no effect on the sim's current appearance. Changing the skintone line takes effect immediately.
I find it rather odd that EAxis would make eyes and hair two separate fields, yet skintone is essentially one field no mater what you change. This explains why my two sims lost their custom skintones.
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2008 January 14, 08:43:06
Custom skins are made of 100% pure evil.
I completely agree with you here. I curse the two creators of these sims for designing such an abomination with absolutely no forsight what-so-ever that the player may actually what to spawn offsprings. My two sims are now, for all intent and purposes, neutered and spayed with no possibilty of reproducing offsprings.
My options are now bolied down to two possibilities. I can either run them both through Sim Surgery and completely change their appearance to all default Maxis features or I can remove all reference to custom features in "Age Data" and then from within the game, use makeup to try and get them to look as close as possible to the original.
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2008 January 14, 08:43:06
Like in real life, some genetic attributes are "recessive". Recessive attributes will be carried by sims that do not actually express them and may reappear in grandchildren.
If I were to set the male "Sim DNA" to brown/brown dominant, blonde/blue recessive (with the female "Sim DNA" the exact oppsite), would the probablity be closer to 50/50 now?
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2008 January 14, 08:43:06
Doesn't work that way. The unwanted features still have a chance of passing on, and the only way to make sure this does not happen is to generate your intended spawn in a CAS test and then replace the LXNR manually. This is most likely beyond your ability to do.
Probably wouldn't be too hard to do this but I have already spent time on this DNA issue that I would rather spend playing the game :)
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