Changing Dominant/Recessive Values on Skin and Eyes

[myskaal]

Yes double checking, in the Skin Tone XML, the line genetic (dtSingle) that is set to 0 for custom skins. This is where, instead of 1, 2, 3 or 4 you would enter .10, .30, .60 or .90?

[Pegasys]

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.)

I thought I'd read it used to be this way but Maxis changed it so that an S1 and S4 always have an S2 or S3 child? At least it seems to work that way in my game.

[angelyne]

The new version of SimPE is much more clear on what DNA is what, but I originally used

I don't find it all that clearer, since I can't find all the lines that were there previously.  For example where is the line for expressed gene?

[Syera]

I'd also like to point out that I'd like to make my skintones so that, while they aren't dominant, don't "blend" with other colors - IE, a pale-skinned parent and a parent with dark blue skin (possibly carrying light skin) shouldn't be able to have a child that was... oh, olive-complextioned.  It should be one or the other.  (More realistically, it should be a purplish color, but that's not exactly doable, I don't think.)

[aqualectrix]

Yes double checking, in the Skin Tone XML, the line genetic (dtSingle) that is set to 0 for custom skins. This is where, instead of 1, 2, 3 or 4 you would enter .10, .30, .60 or .90?

Precisely.  You're not limited to .10 etc., though: anything from 0 to 1 is fine, though I don't think it will take anything with more than 2 figures after the decimal.

I'd also like to point out that I'd like to make my skintones so that, while they aren't dominant, don't "blend" with other colors - IE, a pale-skinned parent and a parent with dark blue skin (possibly carrying light skin) shouldn't be able to have a child that was... oh, olive-complextioned.  It should be one or the other.  (More realistically, it should be a purplish color, but that's not exactly doable, I don't think.)

This is why I leave all my "weird" skins -- colors, fur, robots, etc. as 0.  It's the only way I can think of to stop them "blending" into the normal colors.  Unfortunately this means they are completely dominant; in your example, the child would have dark blue skin.

[Sleepycat]

aqualectrix, Thank you for answering my questions    I'm glad I don't need to do more to all the custom hair I have downloaded and binned *laughs*


I think it's funny that here I was saying just the other day that I hoped Maxis would give us more default skintones (so we could replace them) and then discover today that we can genetic-ly fix our custom skintones to fit into the maxis S1-4 range, giving the babys more skin color choice which is exactly what I wanted! 


Oh I must see if I still have/or can find those non-default custom eyes I really liked so I can use them (with the genetic fix). I too disliked/hated all custom anything being dominant and untill recently - I avoid all custom hair/eyes/skintones even the tattooed ones I made - Ohhhh! maybe I'll do some new tattooed ones now! using Enayla's as a base, of course!

I avoided custom hair untill recently when I started finding some that were color binned (then learned how to do it myself) because I hated all custom hair being in the custom bin, I avoided the "custom = dominant" problem by having all my sims start with Maxis hair (since I didn't know for sure that binning it was enough)

[Syera]

Well, at least I'll be able to fix my pale (Nordic-ish) skin up proper.

What value would you recommend sticking to it so that the game sees it as being a tad lighter than the original light skin, Aqualectrix?

[myskaal]

Thanks very much, aqualectrix.

Ooo must go breed sims now!  

[Renatus]

Well, at least I'll be able to fix my pale (Nordic-ish) skin up proper.

What value would you recommend sticking to it so that the game sees it as being a tad lighter than the original light skin, Aqualectrix?

If it can see values between 0 and 1 and it goes to two decimal places, 0.09 should work if S1 is 0.10, yes?

[aqualectrix]

Yep.  For just a tad lighter I would go with .09 or maybe .08.

[Syera]

What is Maxis' light skin tone set at, anyway?

[Renatus]

Er... isn't that in the thread like three times? 

[Syera]

Uhh... probably.  My brain isn't functioning too well at the moment.   

I feel like I'm coming down with a bug.  Urgh.

So, it's got to be written as point-oh-nine, correct?

[Renatus]

Aw, that sucks. I'm sorry for making fun, then, it IS ridiculously hard to think when one is getting sick. Yes, lightest tone is 0.10 (point one) and lighter would be 0.09 (point oh nine) or less.

[Syera]

I'm sorry; I apologize for being such a pain, but I'm finding this rather confusing.  I keep seeing .09 here, 0.09 there... and well, it's confusing.

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.

And this makes it sound as though .09 should be the darkest color...

[aqualectrix]

Darn that tiny decimal point!
.09 or 0.09 is a bit lighter than .1 or .10 or 0.10, which is S1
.90 or 0.90 is S4.  The darkest would presumably be 1.00, although I use .99.

[Maria]

Thank you for posting about this.  I downloaded a lovely set of purple eyes that I've wanted to install for so long, but not if they were going to overtake the neighborhood.  I was wondering though, is it possible to change the Maxis dark blue eyes from dominant to recessive?  It's so weird for a baby to have dark blue eyes as the dominant gene and brown as the recessive.

[Ellatrue]

This thread is super useful. I feel like it should be in the war room.

[angelyne]

I made an interesting observation.

If you open a skin with SimsPE and go to the Skin Tone XML, right above the genetic field is the Family string.  That string that is found there corresponds to the 2 (dtString):  (Expressed skin tone) found in the Sims DNA.

I will test to be sure it but if you change that string in the Sims DNA, the skin will be changed in the game as well.


Edit : Well I'm happy to report it worked a treat.  I changed the values as described above and voila, skin was changed.  No fussing with sim surgery.  I assume the same will apply for eye color.  So now I know how to completely modify a sim, including facial structure so that no only his appearance is changed, but he will pass on the new traits to his offspring.    <flexes muscles> I have the powah!!

[diamonde]

That's how I heard it described.  0 is custom and will always dominate, 1 is dominant, 2 is recessive, and 3 and 4 are hyper-recessive. 

So I choose 1 for brown/black and 2 for blond/red.  That correspond to mendelian genetics

Actually Maxis had it right, if simplified.  On order of dominance it goes Black>Brown>Blond>Red.  If a person or sim inherits two different hair colour alleles from their parents, they'll only express the one that's further left on my list.  To have red hair you have to get the red allele from both of your parents, which is why it's rare.

To use me as an example: My mum has brown hair like both her parents, so all of them have at least one brown allele.  However, my aunt has red hair so both my grandparents must have a hidden red allele as well.  So my mother must be either brown/brown or brown/red.  Both myself and my sister are blonde, so she can't have passed on a brown allele and must be brown/red.  Meaning I inherited a hidden red hair allele from mum and an equally hidden blonde allele from my dad (his hair's almost black, or was before it went grey), am visibly blonde and can sneakily pass the allele for red hair on to confuse further generations.

The Maxis alien skintone is dominant only when one parent is homozygous to the alien skintone gene. When a parent is heterezygous, with one alien skintone gene and one "regular" Maxis skintone gene, the alien gene turns equal with the regular ones, and has a 50% chance of expressing when inherited.

Is the dominance factor actually modified by the game in the second generation, or do you just mean that with a normal-skinned partner a heterozygously alien-skinned sim will produce alien offspring around half the time?  Because that would imply to me that the alien skin is always dominant, the normal skinned kids are just getting the alien-skinned parent's non-expressed normal gene.


I'm an enormous genetics dork.  I actually like that Maxis got it kind of right, although I'm annoyed that they wussed out of having particulate inheritance for skin colour.  I personally would have found it hilarious to have two dark-skinned sims of mixed ancestry produce a blindingly white baby.

[IgnorantBliss]

Is the dominance factor actually modified by the game in the second generation, or do you just mean that with a normal-skinned partner a heterozygously alien-skinned sim will produce alien offspring around half the time?  Because that would imply to me that the alien skin is always dominant, the normal skinned kids are just getting the alien-skinned parent's non-expressed normal gene.

No, it really isn't dominant in that case. A parent with one alien gene and one normal gene, and another parent with two normal genes will produce a green baby with 25% likelyhood. Another 25% of their kids will have a green gene without experssing it. They have a 50% chance of passing on the gene, but it only expresses half the time.

[diamonde]

No, it really isn't dominant in that case. A parent with one alien gene and one normal gene, and another parent with two normal genes will produce a green baby with 25% likelyhood. Another 25% of their kids will have a green gene without experssing it. They have a 50% chance of passing on the gene, but it only expresses half the time.

Wow, weird.  Thanks for clearing that up, I haven't really played with aliens yet.  Although now I'm tempted to cheat and make myself a few.

[IgnorantBliss]

Yes, it's very strange. I think it's probably to ensure that an abduction pregnancy will produce a green baby, but not to make the alien skin too dominant in the future generations. I've had sims born with a "recessive" alien skintone, so I know it's possible. And if I repeat a birth (without saving, several times) to a set of parents like described in my previous post, I do get an approximate rate of 25% of green babies.

Also the weird thing about the alien skintone is that even those sims who have it as a recessive gene, not showing, can still pass it on to their own children. Normally sims with a regular Maxis skintone will only pass on the skintone they express.

[Syera]

Well, I set my pale skin to an .05, and it works peachy.    Thanks muchly for the help. 

[Sleepycat]

This thread is super useful. I feel like it should be in the war room.

I agree, I would hate for this information to get lost in the shuffle. Peasantry might be a better spot for it though since the strangetown dna thread is there.