Sleepycat

1. If your hair is properly binned, it actually doesn't use the Hairtone XML file anymore.
2. If your hair is properly binned, it is properly genetic-ized, in the sense that the game treats any hair binned as Blonde as if it were a Maxis blonde hair, and inheritance proceeds accordingly.  That is, the girl-child of a non-binned custom-haired mother will always inherit her mother's hair style; if the hair is binned, however, she'll get the default hair for her hair color... which is also annoying, but that's what the toddler mirror is for.
I don't actually know what the genetic field does for the hair.  It doesn't set the bin/color, so perhaps it has something to do with dominance?  Nevertheless, once a hair is binned the dominance is just like whatever you've binned it as, as far as I know.
3. You can change the "color" property to say whatever you like; as you suspect, it doesn't matter a bit.

So: yes, if your hairs are binned, you don't need to use the work-around "Maxis hair in CAS, then change to custom" you've been using.

I believe SeventhSon is correct; the offspring of an S1 Sim and an S4 Sim can have the S1, S2, S3, or S4 skin.  (Or, in my game, about a billion inbetween.)

Genetic-izing skintones is easy.  You just change the genetic field in the Skintone XML.

Maxis skins, from lightest to darkest, are .10, .30, .60, and .90.  Every non-bizarre (i.e. alien) skin I download gets slotted into this continuum; thus a child of a .10 sim and a .60 sim may end up with something I've categorized as .35, or .12, or .40.

It is perfectly fine to have more than one skin with the same genetic value; for example, I have some skins that are essentially the Maxis defaults with tatoos, and those get categorized as .10, .30, etc.

Skins with genetic value of 0 (i.e. alien or most custom skins) are strictly dominant, although I think there have been some questions about how the dominance of the Maxis alien skin really works.

The "The Mysteries of Sim DNA Unraveled" thread at MST2 is full of this stuff, although it's really really long.  There's plenty of information about eye genetics there too, I think, but as I haven't started messing with eyes myself I can't give you any advice about them.

Edit: thread is http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=19921&page=1&pp=25

Edit 2: Oh, and if you're looking for more stuff to genetic-ize, the same method that works for hair works for eyebrows, beards, etc.  I wouldn't use the 6/custom category for these, though, as I've had questionable results with it.  (The "standard" facial hair that genensims has is categorized this way.)

Yah, this confirms my suspicions -- it needs to go in the grey bin.  As it is, the _grey hair is categorized as age = 16 (elder) and hairtone = 1 (black).  So the hair won't show up except for elder sims -- except only category 5 hairs show up for elders, so it will show up for no-one at all.

I binned a bunch of stuff this morning and also saw some of these a..._grey skins, which also were normal elder hairs.  Maybe if I were a recolorist I would know why these names are a bit wacky; as I have no artistic talent and stick to messing about with files, I haven't a clue.  Anyway, the prefix doesn't seem to matter.

I stand by my original instruction: if it ends in _grey, drop it on the grey swatch.  (For hat-hairstyles, there'll be two separate _grey skins, both of which need to be grey-ized.  Confused the heck out of my the first time I saw that.)

It's not necessary to grey-ize the _grey skin if you haven't binned the hair at all, of course: otherwise we would never have seen any custom elder hairs at all!

Grey hair for adults will not end in _grey.  It will end in _black, etc., depending on what base color the recolorist used.  These should be categorized into the appropriate bin or left as custom tones.

In answer to the original question: My initial instinct is to say "hey, if there's only one thing ending in -grey, it's probably meant to be an elder hair and needs to be dragged to the grey swatch".  But I haven't really been paying a lot of attention to the prefix parts of the names.

Can you link to one (or more, more is good) of the hairs with this seeming weirdness, or attach the file, or PM me so I can give you an email address to send it to me?  I'd like to take a look at it, then maybe I can give you a more definitive answer about what causes it and what to do about it.

I find the most difficult part of organizing hair is not categorizing -- which is tedious but simple whether done manually (SimPE or DatGen) or with the DatGen tool.  The difficult part is preparing the files for categorization -- checking what color they are, renaming as necessary so I don't have to check every single time I mess with the file, etc.  No tool can do this, although all of them allow you to see the hair textures if you want to do it on-the-fly.

In essence, there is no easy way to categorize a bunch of (often poorly file-named) hair.  I wish creators would just catch on and distribute the things properly already.  (Some hairs at MTS2 are correct, and all of those at genensims, and I think I've seen a few at TSR2 as I've browsed the freebies now and again.)

A question for those of you who prefer to categorize in a purely manual manner using SimPE: beyond the whole "what is this file anyway?" issue above, why do you prefer the manual method to the at-least-somewhat-automated-method of DatGen?  I've done it both ways, and I'm interested to hear what others think.  I'm kind of surprised to see so many people here advocating the pure manual method.

Kala:

Indeed, the latest version of DatGen doesn't use HairToner anymore, it uses the batch conversion thingy.  (Make sure you have the latest debug version, though -- the 0.7.13 is very buggy when you use it for hair.)  I find it slightly less easier to use than HairToner (but a lot more flexible), but a *lot* less of a pain than doing it manually in SimPE (or manually in DatGen, for that matter).

Have you read the tutorial? http://www.datgen.info/tutorials/sm_hairtone.aspx  It can be pretty confusing, I'll admit.

I know I've written a simpler explanation, let me see if I can find it somewhere... Ah, here we go:

1. Load the hair files into DatGen. Open SkinManager and then the Bulk Hairtoner and Search to get the files to show up.

2. Drag each .package to the correct color: Black, Blonde, Brown, Red, or Other.  We'll fix the grey hairs in a bit.

3. Save and Search again to get the changes to show up.

4. Use the + boxes next to each file name to drill down until you can see the names of each texture. These look like "yfhairshortperm_black", etc.

5. In each hair color you will see one texture has the name "efhairshortperm_grey". Drag this to the grey color swatch up above. You won't get any dialogue saying something's happened, but it's been fixed.

6. Save

7. Click Search again to update the display, and click on each the name of each package again. You will see that instead of each texture being in, say, the "Blonde" category, most of them are "Blonde" and the elder texture is in the "Grey" category. If so, congratulations! You've categorized everything correctly!

Many people don't bother to set the "family", but I like to do it.  Essentially it marks a group of hairs as being the same style; when you switch hair colors in CAS, you'll get the same style in the new color, just like with Maxis hairs.

If you would also like to set the "family" of the hairs correctly, that is even easier:

1. Select one of the .package names.

2. Fill in the button next to "Family Keys in this Package"

3. Put a checkmark by the name of each package in the family (style).

4. Click "Set family to all skins in checked packages". (the middle button)

5. Save and you are done.

I hope this is helpful and works for you.  It's still a bit tedious, but less so than the purely manual method.

Corrrect.  It is not necessary to change the family value to get the hair to show up in the right bin.  And changing family values for a bunch of different hairstyles to the same thing will give you random hairstyle changes on transition, since the hair chosen on transition is "something from the right age group in this family".

What good's the family value, then?

Well, if you've chosen a Maxis hair in CAS and change to a different color bin, you get the same style in a new color.  If you change your family values so that each color of a style has the same family value, correctly-binned custom hairs will do this too.

A reminder that it's not necessary to do all this stuff manually in SimPE as DatGen has a much more automated way of doing it.  In my veiw, the less copy-and-paste I have to do, the better.

Virgali - I'd like to suggest/request that you interview DarkMatter.  He's the author/team leader of the DatGen project, and apparently was very active figuring stuff out in the early days.

He can still be found on MTS2, I think, and the DatGen website is www.datgen.info.

Using SimPE or DatGen to manually categorize hairs is indeed possible and VERY tedious.

The HairToner plugin was indeed dropped in favor of Skin Manager.

Skin Manager cannot tell you what color something ought to be.  If you are lucky, the creator was kind enough to put the color in the filename.  Otherwise, once you have the Hairtone Category Editor open, you can drill down into the files and see textures, which should allow you to decide on your own.  Generally I rename all hairs to something meaningful as a sort of set-up step before going into DatGen.

There is a tutorial for categorizing hairs on the DatGen site which is pretty good.  If any of you are interested in a text-only bare-bones tutorial of how I personally go about it, I can probably work one up.

Anyone planning to use DatGen to categorize hair should make sure to get the debug version.  It fixes many many problems which were in the plain .0.7.13 version -- in fact, at least in the hair-categorizing aspect, it works perfectly.

So true.  It definitely wins the prize for "best game rescued from the bargin bin".  I love that all the little aliens have their own ways of doing things -- making a lake on the Environmental Deck and watching them swim is just hilarious.  And if the missions don't appeal, Sandbox play is always fun.

I believe it's a hack of Inge's: www.simlogical.com

Also, you gotta love this:

As if packaging your families up and unpacking them into a "clean" neighborhood would HELP with overpopulation issues.  Oh, the irony.

And as if jumps caused by overpopulation were not, in fact, jump BUGS, but... something else.  Something non-buggy.  Y'know, like a problem in the code that crops up in certain situations which are pretty much guaranteed with the designed gameplay.  Except that's a bug.

Huh.  Strange.  I've always adopted them in via the social worker.  Maybe I'm just remembering things incorrectly.  I've got a mind like a steel sieve.

I guess if you do end up with any weirdness you can fix it with SimPE after you've adopted the kid.

Yeah, I never bothered reporting it to Inge because I figured it was just general adoption weirdness.  Good to know it's not just me, though.

Ah, I see Motoki's got here first.  Just in case you haven't got Nightlife, or there are still weirdnesses with the way the bush puts kids in the adoption pool, I'll post my reply anyway:

Yes.  Ish.

That will indeed be the toddler they bring when you adopt a toddler.  However I've run into some wackiness involving toddlers put into the adoption pool by the teleporter plus shrub.  (It could be just general wackiness with going into the adoption pool; I've never had the social worker take kids so I don't know.)  Sometimes they aren't marked as family properly when you adopt them (through the social worker).

I find I am able to fix this problem in SimPE.  The best time to do it is after you have put the tot up for adoption but before you re-adopt it.  In SimPE, remove any links it has to its father(s) in the family tree, and uncheck the family checkbox in the Relations tab.  Go ahead and mark the father(s) relationship as "Unknown" instead of "Parent", too.


I haven't done this in a while, so I could be missing some stuff or just plain crazy.  Therefore, the age-old warning: before even putting the tot up for adoption, back up your game.  Then try putting him up for adoption and re-adopting him.  If that gives you funny results (as has been my experience), return to the backup, put him up for adoption, do as I said in SimPE, re-adopt, and if that doesn't blow up in your face, you're home free.  If it does blow up in your face... I was never here, I never said anything.  Return to backup.

You might also want to look into Twojeffs' Have Child/Adopt Child Want Fixes:
http://www.variousimmers.net/vsimforum/showthread.php?t=555

Current count is ~88, although it looks like I'm heading into a death-rich period, which will hopefully take care of most of the shipped-with-game sims left in the neighborhood.  I play in 2-day stretches per house, with 2 uni semesters = 2 neighborhood days.  23 houses, four of which are dorms.  I think the neighborhood's into gen 4 or so.

It's manageable right now, but as I've got 21 children right now I'm thinking I may have been a bit silly with my "to heck with population control, I like simspawn!" decision.

I keep index cards, flagged by age and paperclipped together by household.  Helps keep track of vital statistics and play-order.  It's nice to see that other people are obsessively keeping track of their sims too.  Or maybe just worrying.

Do you all have absolutely no memories of the updating spree that went on when Uni came out?  The same "Oh no!  My precious hacks!  Not having the phone hack is driving me insane!"  The same six-to-eight week wait for J.M. to get the game.  The same "Get J.M. the game faster!" offers of money, and the same explanations from J.M. as to why this is totally useless.

Seriously, did you not expect this to happen again?  We cross our fingers and hope he'll work from code diffs.

It's got something to do with how the mesh or object is saved by SimPE; DatGen folks think there's a better way to do it.  It's not harmful, though.

'Tisn't a bug, really.

The money passed out on death isn't inheritance per se.  It's life insurance.  The total amount may be more or less than the sim's actual wealth; I believe the handout to each beneficiary is determined by the dead sim's aspiration level and the living sim's relationship with the dead sim.

To my knowledge, if a Sim dies alone, all its money is lost forever.  You can deal with this in two (at least that I know of) ways.  In the last few days of a sim-living-alone's life, you can either move someone in with him/her or have him/her send money away via money orders.