Brandi Broke's Third Child??

[Ancient Sim]

Well, I restarted my restarted Pleasantview and this time Brandi had a boy with black hair and green eyes, this time an Aries with only 3 Nice points.  Not sure who he looks like yet, he's only just become a child, but he doesn't seem to resemble either Brandi or Skip at the moment. 

Talking of Skip, his ghost came out on the 8th day on the lot and he was not a happy bunny.  First he scared Dustin and the newly-transitioned Robin before they went to bed, then proceeded to wake Beau up twice.  He didn't attempt to scare Brandi or the 3 visitors on the lot.  What puzzled me was that he was constantly complaining that the youngest boy wasn't related to Dustin and therefore wasn't family.  Could making him unlinked have caused that, because presumably he doesn't realise that the third boy is actually his son.

Oh, and for those who are unaware of how he died, he didn't drown, he starved.  The fridge had only been restocked a couple of days previously (or even the day before) and he basically emptied it overnight. 

[Bangelnuts]

hmm that could be what he was yelling about .due to the unlinking  Brandi's third child in my game with skip is a girl.

[IgnorantBliss]

I just started off with a fresh new copy of Pleasantview. I can't wait to see how Brandi's third child turns out. I never actually played the Maxis families before.

[IgnorantBliss]

Well, it doesn't seem to me like anything has been fixed about Skip's missing DNA. My Pleasantview has been generated after installing Nightlife and the patch, but I just repeated Brandi's birth ten times without saving, and every single time the result was a boy (with black hair and grey eyes). Maybe the people who've had different results post NL did something to make Skip's DNA available themselves. It seems to me that otherwise it'll still be a male clone of Brandi.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I have a feeling that post NL you are more likely to get the same baby/babies again even when you exit without saving.  I had to do this with Kiernan's alien babies as the first got stuck and the second still hadn't arrived after several sim hours.  I moved him and Nylisset from Downtown to Pleasantview and tried again, and he had twins again (I don't know if they were the same sex, the game locked up before it informed me) and this time they were fine - but still twins.  Usually before NL if something was going wrong I exited without saving and the result would be different, whether it was babies or some other aspect of the game.

[Kyna]

Since there are mods that can tell you how many babies a pregnant sim is going to have (the earliest I've used a mod like this is the hour following conception) I think the twin thing is decided at conception.  Saving before a birth isn't going to change the number of babies a sim gives birth to.  Unless you are using something like TJ's random Triplet & Quads mod.

[ZephyrZodiac]

But when you exit without saving and haven't saved since just after your sim got pregnant, maybe it does change things?  Or did?  Like at one time, if you had to exit without saving when a baby had just grown into a toddler, you had checked their birth sign etc., and then something went pear-shaped and you had to quit, then reloaded just before the baby was due to grow up and things happened differently and the toddler got a different birth sign?  I just wondered if post NL the random thing is even less efficient?

[IgnorantBliss]

I have a feeling that post NL you are more likely to get the same baby/babies again even when you exit without saving.  I had to do this with Kiernan's alien babies as the first got stuck and the second still hadn't arrived after several sim hours.  I moved him and Nylisset from Downtown to Pleasantview and tried again, and he had twins again (I don't know if they were the same sex, the game locked up before it informed me) and this time they were fine - but still twins.  Usually before NL if something was going wrong I exited without saving and the result would be different, whether it was babies or some other aspect of the game.

I've had other births after installing Nightlife where repeating it gave a different result every time. Also, I looked at the baby's genes in SimPE, he's a clone of Brandi, no Skip genes present, so I could repeat the birth a hundred times and still get the same results. So, that's that. Too bad.

I'm pretty sure the child already has their personality determined as a baby, even though you can't see it in the game yet. In SimPE you can see even the babies' personalities.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Have you checked to see if they always get that personality, though?  I rather wonder whether it depends on if they grow up at 6pm, in which case they get the predetermined personality, or if something delays their growing up, and then they get a different one, maybe the next Sign?  Be interesting to make identical (cloned) twins, and grow them up at different times to see what happens!

[Ancient Sim]

To get the NL changes you need to generate a new copy of the neighbourhood by removing or renaming your original EA Games folder (in My Documents).  This is the mistake I made the first time I restarted, I copied the one from Program Files and that's not the same, particularly in terms of the Bella situation.  Nevertheless, none of the ghosts were linked, I still had to link them myself, so I'm not sure why people are saying they are linked with NL because they certainly don't seem to be in my game.  It still seems odd that Skip doesn't recognise his own son, though.  He is clearly shown as the father. 

I got two births the wrong sex - apart from wanting Brandi to have a girl, I let the Pleasants have another as I always regretted that they had no one to carry on the name and got a third girl.  Amazingly, she has red hair and green eyes (from both parents), although that might be because I gave Mary-Sue those as her recessive genes. 

[IgnorantBliss]

Oh, I didn't regenerate the whole EA Games folder, just the Neighborhoods folder. You don't think that'll work? I did not copy any from Program Files, I just let the game generate new neighborhoods the nest time I started the game.

[Process Denied]

I just got TS2 and I have been assigning custom eyes and skins to everyone and I have seen that a lot of the pass on genes from the characters are wrong.  If you have TS2 or you know how to do DNA in SimPE you probably should check to see if Skip's DNA is correct.  In mine, it had some wrong info but I still got a girl so it must have been okay.  I highly recommend TS2 for the computerly challenged.  I like Sim PE for everything but I like TS2 for DNA.  It is so easy,and well worth the money.  I actually got all the changes done in the 48 hour trial but I bought it anyways.  My Uni's are Seniors--I'm so excited!!  I'll be able to go back to the hood and see what (Chase) Brandi's girl looks like when grown up.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Sorry, but what exactly is TS2? apart from theSims2, that is?

[RainbowTigress]

I think he/she is referring to The Sims Enhancer (TSE).

[ZephyrZodiac]

I've got it, but it needs upgrading.  I still prefer SimPE now I've learned how to use it for doing a lot of stuff!  For instance, if I'm removing townies from the game, I like to actually take their character file out of the Characters folder myself!  So satisfying, to dump Goopy in the recycle bin!

[RainbowTigress]

LOL.  Someone should just give him a push while he is digging through the trash.  I refuse to pay for TSE.  I don't mind technical stuff, and it does what I want for free.  I don't have the money for anything else.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I don't really, but I'm just so addicted!  and his sims 1 programmes were so great, I thought I'd try it.  Admittedly it was a lot quicker than using simPE, but, what the heck, you get used to it!  And both programmes have to be closed for at least a minute before you can change anything in the files they've just accessed!  Now, Sim Enhancer wasn't like that in Sims1, and I'd had hopes...... And the object Manager was brilliant for shifting stuff around!

[IgnorantBliss]

I bought the Sim Enhancer about a year ago, but then when I learned to use SimPE, I never really went back to it anymore, since SimPE can do everything it can, and more. However, I do admit that the Sim Enhancer is more "user friendly" to the average gamer who just wants to edit a sim's last name every once in a while. For the random user, SimPE can be quite confusing.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Oh, I totally agree, scared the life out of me when Damage first introduced me to how it works!  But we didn't have simenhancer then, so I either had to learn to use it or do without!  But compared to paint programs, which totally flummox me, it's a cakewalk!

[Swiftgold]

The one thing I got TSE for was the genetics editing - everything else is more easily done in SimPe for me, but my three custom skins (which I made with the downloaded Bodyshop before the game actually came out) were getting glitchy and the hair categorization had replaced the scalp textures and several of my Sims had lost their normal skin for no reason - even one who had started with a Maxis skin!

SimPe's SimSurgery would not take for skins, nohow, and I was despairing. TSE fixed the skin problem so easily, though - easily enough that I remade my custom skins and reassigned them several times till I got them the way I wanted. So, yeah. I still use SimPe for just about everything except genetics changing/fixing...

[Process Denied]

I totally agree(sorry TS2E) is so easy at genetics--probably because I don't want to mess with evil numbers.  But I'm used to using SimPE for the other editing so it is much easier.  Now my maids look positivily naughty.  I made Mary Sue more enhanced--come on--there has to be a reason for Daniel to be with her!!

[IgnorantBliss]

The upcoming version of SimPE, when it's out for public release, is going to make DNA editing quite a bit easier than before. All the lines have now been marked what they are ("dominant hair color" and so on).

[Process Denied]

That will be awesome!!  Thanx for the info.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I thought I'd revive this thread as it seemed the most pertinent place to post what I've just come up against, as follows:

In my currently being revived and corrected version of Pleasantview (a post NL installation) I started having problems with noticing the thumbnails of certain sims were showing as No character Data.  These were as follows, Brandi, Beau and Keanu Broke, Steve and Sally Strong (Steve is Brandi's fiance and Sally his daughter) - but not Dustin who is at Uni - and Jennifer Burb who has just broken up with John (but he's the one who moved out!)

Well, the main big pics are fine, just the small thumbnails, the character data, memories etc. are all as they should be, and when entering the lot the sims appear to be normal.

But, I did a check in SimEnhancer, and happened to look at Brandi's Genetic data.  It shows her hair and eye colour as NA, although both Bob and Betty have Black Hair and Gray Eyes.

So I checked all three kids.  Each one is shown as having both parents with blond hair, but eye colour varies according to the child concerned!  Now, it could well be, I suppose, that Beau and Dustin were created in CAS or something wierd like that, but Keanu is born in game!

Now the interesting thing is I have a cloned version of this hood (or at least its characters) and the Broke family show up as completely normal, but in at least one other version of Pleasantview the same anomalies are present.

Can anyone confirm that they have the same thing happening in their game, and if so, perhaps have some better explanation than I do as to what is going on here?

[IgnorantBliss]

Yes, I'm pretty sure that Dustin and Beau were created in CAS (or, at least were not born the normal way). If they had a black hair gene from Brandi, they would not be expressing blonde hair. I don't think any of the Pleasantview kids have correct genes based on their parents. Only the kids that are born after installing the game have the kind of genes they are supposed to. Lilith and Angela also would not have red hair if they were genetic children of Mary-Sue who's homozygous to black hair.