More Awesome Than You!

by reloading and trying again, Yes or No?

I've tried reloading four times and got boys all 4 times. This makes me think sex might be determined at woohoo (unlike sims2), but it's of course not enough attempts to be sure. Anyone confirm this?

Gender has to be determined earlier than in The Sims 2; high level doctor Sims have an interaction for pregnant Sims that tells you what gender the baby will be.

Someone in the other thread reported a birth resulting in a boy rather than a girl after having to reload from a crash.  The save happened after conception in that instance.  How soon can the doctor tell the gender?


Could this be caused by the same sadorandom generator fail as Sims 2?  Have you tried creating a few random sims and seeing if the results repeat?  It may be a stupid idea, but I figured it might be worth a try to see if it's the same deal we had in TS2.

I have not arr'd the game, so I can't check this myself to try and help you, sorry.

Gender in TS3 appears to be somewhat more controllable than in TS2: There's a cheesecake effect at work. Eating foods containing "watermelon" increases the chance of females, eating foods containing "apple" increases males.

Oh good lord. Those friggin' apples!

To CharleeRose, no I only tried one family 8-9 reloads and then gave up.

So JM, when is the gender actually determined? From what you said I'm guessing its still at birth, and the game will look at actions during the pregnancy and determine it then? In my case, this family ate nothing but apple pancakes so by the time it was born there was 100% chance of boy?

I haven't researched the exact determination point, but obviously, if food eaten influences it, it must happen during birth, as sims don't actually EXIST until they are born.

No wonder I've had eight boys in a row. My sims pretty much subsist on apple pancakes. That'll be stopping right about now.

I guess this is good news in the long run.  I think I'll mind avoiding either apples or watermelon during pregnancy much less annoying than having to generate and trash random sims each time I start up the game.

I never got the Prima Guide for TS2, and heard about the "Cheese Cake Twins" from here (MATY). My question to any one with the Prima Guide for TS2: Was, 'how to have twins' mentioned in the guide?
Because without having the awesomeness that Pes has, how would your Average Joe now that by eating Apples and Watermelon would determine the sex of the baby in TS3?

I have the guide and, yes, it did say to eat cheesecake to get twins.

As for your question of how would us "regular Joes" know to eat/avoid certain foods, we wouldn't.  You expect something EA does to make sense? LOL  They just wait for people like the great Pes to bail their asses out.

The guide did mention it, but of course what they said was wrong.  They said cheesecake gave you only an increased chance, but in reality cheesecake gave you 100% chance of twins.

I just remembered something, when thinking of the apples/watermelons thing. In my game, my sim rolled a wish to eat cobbler with grapes, I had no idea how to do that, so I had her husband make some cobbler, then had her eat a piece of it, then eat some grapes, which didn't work, so I came on here and asked, and figured out how to do it.

The point though, is she had triplets who were all girls, she had eaten 2 slices of "apple cobbler" when I was trying to eat grapes, then cobbler, when that didn't work I tried eating cobbler then grapes. So all in all she had 2 slices of apple cobbler, but got triplet girls.

She had never eaten anything at all else during her pregnancy aside from the actual "grapes cobbler" when I figured out how to make them, because I use the testing cheats enabled and drag her needs to fill them. The only reason she got to eat then was because she rolled that wish. So maybe they have to eat a lot of apples to get boys, or maybe the grapes threw off the boys and gave her girls, I don't know. But it is interesting that it happened that way. I think multiple births are buggy anyways though, so it could all be nothing.

After reading this i went back to playing on my newly pregnant sim.  I had her eat nothing but store bought watermelon directly from the inventory.  I ended up with twin girls, coincidence or not?  More testing required.

I've noticed one thing when you ONLY want ONE kid you always end up with twins or triplets.  Nevermind the fact that raising 2+ toddlers at once is complete and utter HELL.

Hire a babysitter?

I keep forgetting about them mostly since the sims 2 ones were awful.  Do they actually teach the toddlers to talk and walk or do you have to do that still?

I thought this myself and tried/tested it. I hired the babysitter before teaching them anything, and after a few sim days/week of watching (playing Epic gave me the chance to, if it failed to correct it, as follows...) I ended up having the mother quit her job to stay home and teach them. Some of the "Teach to" came up in the wish panel, so that was a 'bonus'. From the look of it, the babysitter doesn't teach them, eg. They only change their nappies, instead of taking them to the potty. That's just my test. The babysitter is a lot better than in TS2 though in other regards, I feel anyway.

D'oh! When I first read this, my initial impression was that you were being sarcastic [ode to the twin rumors pre-cheesecake]... *le sigh* However, the wish to have a girl/boy now makes much more sense. Some people [I don't remember who] were understandably complaining about including a wish that only had a random 50/50 percent chance of being fulfilled, but apparently EAxis was thinking ahead this time. Provided the baby gender wish actually appears early enough for the player to influence the outcome with food.

Their fruit choice is lame, though... EAxis should have used bananas and peaches [innuendos fully intended].

This is not the BBS, so I'm not going to go about starting any rumors for the heck of it. If I issue a statement, it will be, within the qualifiers given, true.

I have noticed along the lines of the wishes for a girl or boy, if my sims roll one, I usually keep it, and then they have always had what they wished for. My sims do not eat, because I use the cheats to keep their motives maxed, so the food doesn't affect them, but I haven't seen one of those wishes be wrong yet, so maybe there is more to the wishes.

I've only had one conflicting wish from both parents, mom wanted a girl, and dad wanted a boy, I clicked mom's first and a few sim hours later, dad rolled up the wish to have a boy, and I clicked it as well, but remembered that I already gave mom the girl one, so I deleted his wish. They had a girl. Of course that could just be coincidences in my game, but it hasn't failed yet. 

I'd have to chalk that up to coincidence.  While doing genetics testing yesterday I started saving the mother's gender wishes.  She had 3 girl wishes, and ended up having 3 boys (singleton and twins) and three girls (triplets). 

Duly noted.

I believe "apples" is Russian slang for testicles.  I refuse to speculate on watermelon.  :D

Hook

Rubbish!
Russian word direct-translates to "eggs" not "apples".

Slang.  There are lots of words for the same body part.

Hook

Apples kind of make sense for boys. Adam's Apple

Hook would know about testicles.  ::)

Ok... convinced.  My same couple had a second pregnancy. I had the woman eat nothing but store bought watermelon straight from her buttpack since she doesn't know any recipes to cook with watermelon. She had girls with ten straight reloads. That's a nice feature since I hate boys.

My Sim choked down nothing but raw watermelon (non-recipe watermelon) and got a girl.

The babies in Sims 2 were so annoying that I cheated this one's needs up and it incubates happily in its crib 24/7.

My native language is Russian and I am telling you: NO apples. Not on telly or in books or in everyday slang (where I used to live anyway).

Do you mean apple is or is not slang for testicles? You are not exactly clear.

Eliste is saying that apple is not slang for testicles.

[[/quote]

My native language is Russian and I am telling you: NO apples. Not on telly or in books or in everyday slang (where I used to live anyway).
[/quote]

I'm from Holland which is pretty darn small in comparison to Russia and has way more dialects then i claim to know.., i'm sure Russia has even more dialects to choose from.

It's entirely possible, but given that we have a native speaker saying 'no' and somebody else who 'heard' I'm inclined to believe Eliste.

My mother lived in East Berlin until she was seven (leaving several years before the wall went up). She has told me all my life that 'people' is Berlinner slang for penis, but I'm not about to argue the fact with an actual Berlinner.

So that's why my female sim has has 3 boys, those damn apple pancakes her husband likes

Coincidence. Both of mine wished for a boy and had six girls. No watermelons involved either.

??? I live in Berlin and have never heard that before. I guess it had to do with the fact that your mom was only seven, it may have been a word for kids to use.

Yes, but as Hook noted, it is a mystery why melons would be associated with females.   ::)

Well, 'melons' are one of the many slang words used for breasts in the U.S.. I can't vouch for other English speaking countries. Watermelons would be pushing that concept a bit though.

Gotcha!   ;)

Because girls have babies and babies are like watermelons (in your head) belly!

I've had 13 boys. Damn those apple pancakes! At least now I know what not to do.

Probably, or the fact that this was over 50 years ago, or maybe it was only on her street - whatever. Like I said I won't argue (not that I think you're trying to argue) with someone with more imeadiate knowledge than myself.

Oh, and as for watermelons we can read anything into that. I seem to remember an old wives tale about swallowing watermelon pips making you pregnant . . . .

Go and buy a watermelon, quick.

Nice melons&apples you got there :P

Also mentioned in the TS3 magazine.
Watching the "Childrenchannel" (don´t know if this is the exact name in the english version)  increases the chance of getting twins and triplets.

Childrenchannel for multi's - anything else noted? Is the cheesecake still in Sims 3?

Melon is indeed a slang for boobs = "Look at the melons on her". But in MHO cherries would have been more fitting for Boys.

Seriously? Or is this just a theory.  Remember the whole spaghetti/twins thing in Sims 2? I thought EA/Maxis said there was no basis to that, that it didn't determine the type of child you had.

All I know for now is that I had my game crash after having a girl baby and thankfully I had saved it while she was still pregnant, so when I started playing again, she wound up having the baby sooner than she did the first time, but it was still a girl.  I've been spending so much time fishing and collecting, that I used cheats to keep up her health.  I don't think she ever actually ate anything the whole time she was pregnant, other than maybe the goopy garbino (or w/e) and pancakes, one time each.  She has harvested both apples and watermelons, but I can't recall if she did that while pregnant or not.  Like I said, I kept her busy with fishing and collecting - oh, and reading books to learn stuff too.  I figured once the baby was born she'd have less time for that.

On a side note, while the baby is still a baby, I've been using cheats to keep it totally happy, but tired so it would sleep while my sims were busy doing other things.  I thought that would be helpful, but then realized I was not building any kind of relationship with the parents because they were not interacting with the child.  So I started making sure the parents took time to play with the baby and feed it.  I dont want the child to be on a starnger level with its parents.  I thought you all might want to know that in case you hadn't experienced it yet, or thought of just keeping the kid happy till it became a toddler before you started interacting with it.

As for whether or not the "wishes" affect the gender, my dad sim wished for a boy, and mom sim wished for a girl (this was both before and after the crash), and of course, mom got her wish both times.

Since Pescado has been delving into the code from moment one of the leak, I'd say it's pretty definite. My own tests since have supported it. Eight boys in a row, with sims mostly subsisting on apple pancakes. My first girl was born after having the incubator eat three servings of watermelon and no apples.

5 boys in a row, had her eat watermelon while pregnant, a a girl was born. I don't like it...its too predictable. I want babies genders to be a surprise.

I find it interesting that this effect is not just limited to the fruits in their raw form, as Zazazu has been getting boys with the apples in pancakes. I am interesting in seeing if watching the children's channel does indeed increase the chance of multiples or it's still random.

So avoid apples and watermelon. Eat only fish or something and it should still be random.

That means you can't eat fruit parfait, french toast, or eggs machiavellian. It's also possible that either or could be in pancakes or PB&J. Five meals that are effectively banned from pregnant women if you don't want sex determined, leaving only cereal (quick meal) or waffles for breakfast. That seems...terribly restrictive.

Well, you could always make everything with grapes.

As far as I know, my sim did not eat apples or watermelon with the first 5 pregnancies so therefore, it appears that the sim will have boys UNLESS they eat watermelon. So avoiding apples doesn't do it.

By how much? Would the effect of eating a watermelon be cancelled by eating an apple?

This could be sadorandom. If you eat neither apples nor watermelon, you'd have a 50/50 chance. It is possible that the same gender was rolled 5 times in a row. In order to verify that claim, you'd have to make your sim go through a lot more pregnancies.

Btw, this whole balls/apples/eggs thing reminds me of a Russian saying that goes: "For a bad dancer, even his own eggs get in the way."
I can't help but lol when I hear it.

It is restrictive, but it's only for a few days. I also think we need to know more about how it works, because there are lots of good questions being raised in this thread. You can also try just not having any apples or watermelon in the fridge, but have other fruit and that should allow you to make any recipe that is just "fruit" and not specifically apple or watermelon.

Tsarina, it is not a scientific experiment with a control group and all that..and it could simply be random. But if not, its silly and I want it to go away! Of course, I want girls because the townie girls are so ugly and I am tired of trying to find suitable mates for my boys. So I will probably keep on having them eat watermelon because I am weak.

This was exactly my point. Since it's not a scientific experiment, you can't say that avoiding apples won't work.

Personally, I'm not too keen on the idea of ANY kind of food influencing the baby's sex. Urgh. I like random.

I confirm the pancakes, one of my sims has it as his favorite food and he keeps cooking apple pancakes.

Add also deserts. Haven't seen them all but there's cookies and lime pie. These won't have any apple or watermelon added.

Yes...one of my sims is a Master cook and knows all recipes. I said it was possible for pancakes or PB&J to include apples because both use generic fruit. It's been my experience that pancakes almost always get apples if they are available. Fruit parfait and french toast list apples specifically as an ingredient. Eggs machiavellian list watermelon.

I totally forgot about the desserts. Those should be safe except for cobbler, which includes a generic fruit. Of course you can manipulate the fridge to have no apples or watermelons and stock it with other fruits, still avoiding the specific recipes (which should then cost you simoleons).

I find myself wishing it was something not as easily obtained, though, so that gender specification couldn't be accidental. Flame fruits would be good...you can only get those through harvesting (they are in baked angel food cake and can be used as a generic fruit).

Seriously.  It seems backwards to me.  The gender of a baby gets artificially influenced without any input from the player at all but you have to jump through hoops to get it to be random?

I have been experimenting with apples/watermelons and it seems that they do give the chance of a certain sex being born. First I had the female sim eat nothing, I bumped up her motives by cheating, she had five children 2 boys and 3 girls. Second time I had her eat nothing but apples, both raw and made into recipes, this resulted in 5 boys. Third time the sim ate nothing but watermelon, raw and cooked into recipes, this resulted in all girls so far.

For the watermelon test, I gave the father the fertility treatment during the third pregnancy, the day after the female started showing, and they had twins. The fourth pregnancy resulted in twins also, the fifth is still in progress. All previous pregnancies were single babies. Is the number of babies determined at time of birth or time of conception?

I don't think I'm going to mess with kids this time around. They were a pain in TS1 and TS2. I just don't want to deal with the little ankle-biters in TS3.

As far as I know, my sim did not eat apples or watermelon with the first 5 pregnancies so therefore, it appears that the sim will have boys UNLESS they eat watermelon. So avoiding apples doesn't do it.
[/quote]

That can't be correct.  My Sim had a girl before and after my game crash (same pregnancy, the first birth was just lost when the game crashed) and she has never eaten watermelons at all.  She's grown them in the garden, but so far I haven't had her eat them.  Her pregancy wasn't affected by any foods really, because like I said earlier, I mostly used the cheat to keep all her motives leveled up and therefore she ate waffles one time and the "goopy" meal one time.  She hasn't even eaten apples or watermelons before she was pregnant.  She has had pancakes before she was pregnant though.

I find them to be less of a pain in TS3 because you can age the infants up pretty much immediately by buying a birthday cake.  In fact, and I suspect this is a fact that quite a few people haven't discovered yet, you can age anyone up at any point in time by buying a birthday cake and clicking "Blow out candles".  You will get a list of every Sim currently in the house, including friends, neighbors and countrymen, and you can just select whichever person it is you want to age up.

Kids are definitely better, IMO.  They do homework autonomously, will go to friend's houses after school, and generally seem to take pretty good care of themselves.

Toddlers are definitely much easier to deal with now.  If I have a toddler in the yellow, all I have to do is cancel out the queue of one sim and they will go see to the kid after a few seconds.  There is of course still the issue with every sim in the house who is a teen or older trying to change the same kid's diaper at the same time if they're not otherwise occupied. :P

Early age-up is great, and not much of a problem if you always randomize the traits like I do. If your toddler isn't seen to have developed enough, the game rolls for you. Other than that, yes, babies and toddlers are a total pain in the ass, much worse than TS2. They can't even sleep fully without going into hunger or social failure. I've resorted to cheating their motives up during the night.

So is it possible to have twins/triplets that aren't all of the same gender?  So far, I've only seen reports of all boys/all girls.  Anyone have a mixed batch?  It seems stupid to not be able to have fraternal twins. 

I have not had mixed genders, but I have had what must be fraternal girl twins because they were not at all identical.

Has anyone found a food that will help in having multiples. A "cheesecake" type item?

I read that watching the kid channel while pregnant may result in multiples. Or get the fertility treatment but I wouldn't recommend it if you plan another pregnancy after that one, all you'll get is twins and triplets

if the wife and husband both have the fertility treatment, tripliets is 100% guranteed so your family will multiply like acursed ants!!

I got the fertility reward for Agnes Crumplebottom because I wanted to make sure she had a baby (when I was trying for a ghost baby).  It did not cause her to have multiple births.  She did not eat apples or watermelons, as I was too busy cheating her motives to keep them up.  I did feed her spaghetti once because she wished for it - don't think that has in fruit in it, but with this game, who knows?  Anyway, she has now had two boys in a row - one normal and one ghost.  (What fruit does french toast have in it, cuz she did eat that during the second pregnancy?)  I'm going to try for a third time tonight before I uninstall this version to install my storebought one tomorrow.

Wrong.  2 Sims with Fertility Treatment are perfectly capable of producing twins, and I'd wager that they could even have singles. 

There is still the cap of 8 sims in a household, so sims with the fertility treatment perk are limited to six kids at home at a time. Someone could try stuffing the house with random roommate types to try to prevent spawning while other families were being played.

I've gotten singles, twins, AND triplets when both of the (same) parents had the fertility reward, it's still random, but it looks like the chance of multiples increases for each parent that has it.   I've also bred several different pregnancies trying out the apples and watermelons theory, and I've had several boys on a watermelon only diet, as well as girls on the apple diet, and vice versa.

I have, however, never had a mixed gender multiple birth, and I'm pretty sure that's a bug that EAxis didn't fix before release.

My test family for the watermelon vs apples theory, have both received the fertility treatment, and have had a few sets of multiple offspring, they have not had one set yet that are of mixed gender. I am done with the watermelon/apple thing, and I have been allowing them to eat whatever is in the fridge minus apples or watermelon, still no mixed sex multiples.

The Prima guide confirms the apples/watermelons theory. It also says that watching children's TV & listening to kids' music ups your chance of multiples. :)

Pssh. Prima Guide cannot "confirm" anything. The Prima Guide is far more often wrong than right.

Uggghhhh!  That's been my preferred way of getting through childcare quickly and ending up with the stereotypical family:  Get mom preggers with twins.  Rush her through to pregnancy.  Save the game, reload until I've got one boy and one girl.  Repeat all care actions twice, badabing, badaboom. 

Not that families with multiples of the same gender are bad or anything, I just like having one of each for some of my families. 

Of course, since we can only play one family in Sims 3, I guess I can live with it until el Presidente fixes it or something. 

A glitch-riddled game with an inaccurate guide.  Check.  All is well with the universe.

I have a 1995 roadmap of Ontario, which was conveniently the only roadmap in my car the last time I headed down the road to Toronto.  This was coupled with the mystical convergence of two other events:
1) My wife saying "Let's take the scenic route."
2) The changing of all the county and provincial road numbers in the past few years.
This naturally increased the "adventure" quotient of the trip, since we were discovering new roads that had not existed at the time of the map, some of which had numbers that corresponded to those on the map, while the older roads all had new numbers.  You might think that the solution would be to simply stop at the nearest petrol station and get a new map, but this was not the case (Mrs. jolrei: "NO, we don't need another new map!  We have one at home!").  We got there in the end (Toronto is not that hard to find, after all), but it was rather later than we had expected.

Using the Prima Guide is much like this.

Fair enough.

What testing I have done thus far ingame seems to confirm as well, but I haven't been testing as extensively some of the folks here have, so take it with a grain of salt. I had a female subsist primarily on apples or watermelon for the duration of her four pregnancies, so it's a rather small data pool (some spaghetti was allowed for cravings). The three apple-based pregnancies resulted in boys. The watermelon-based pregnancy was accompanied by copious amounts of children's music and resulted in twin girls. Feel free to add that to the data pool if you want.

Re: when the sex of babies is determined.

My sim is now in a high level of Medicine career and apparently has the ability to guess the sex of the baby chatting with a pregnant sim (under Friendly menu). I have tested it only once, so far (and it worked); so, the sex is definitely set before the birth, unlike in TS2.
I'm planning to do an extensive test, using this feature in different stages of pregnancy, before and after the mother eats stuff, and so on. If you want to try the same, it could be an interesting experiment.

Interesting.

The whole baby thing is just wierd. The chimes play on conception, so you know they're knocked up, but you can still TFB until bhoump.

???!

Plus you can talk, listen and rub preggy sims tummy minutes after conception and when Betty Newbie saw Ruby Broke go into labour with Bob Newbies baby she had the option to take the mother to the hospital - where she stayed even after Bob turned up. Then Betty got a new baby in family moodlet for the sprog as well.

I can't seem to get any babies that are female...damn Nazis.

I'll definitely grant the Prima guides aren't the final word on these things, but how about EA's own coding?  Here's what I found while poking around in the gameplay packages:

<kGenderOffsetPerFoodEaten value="0.15">
      <!--Offset provided to gender random per food eaten (watermelon & apple).-->
    </kGenderOffsetPerFoodEaten>
    <kMaxGenderOffset value="0.5">
      <!--(0-.5) Maximum offset from .5 allowed to be achieved.-->
    </kMaxGenderOffset>

And regarding multiples, that experiment about watching kid channels may have some merit.  Although it still looks like your chance of triplets is still only 3% if you watch kid tv and listen to kid music for 6 sim-hours (whereas your chance for twins is raised to 75% in the same situation, which is pretty cool).  I'm assuming this is for regular sims without the fertility booster; will update if I find that coding.

<kChanceOfTwins value="0.025">
      <!--(0-1) chance of getting twins.-->
    </kChanceOfTwins>
<kChanceOfTriplets value="0.001">
      <!--(0-1) chance of getting triplets, must be less than chance of twins.-->
    </kChanceOfTriplets>
<kMaxBabyMultiplier value="30">
      <!--Maximum multiplier used when determing the chance of multiple babies.-->
    </kMaxBabyMultiplier>
<kKidMultiplierPerHour value="2">
      <!--Multiplier added to base per hour of kid entertainment (tv or stereo).-->
    </kKidMultiplierPerHour>
 <kDoubleKidMultiplierPerHour value="5">
      <!--Multiplier added to base per hour of kid entertainment (tv and stereo together).-->
    </kDoubleKidMultiplierPerHour>

Think: Adam's apple and... women's melons. LOL.

ZING!

Yes, thank you so much, we've already done this bit.  Old joke is old.

I am non-awesome, and non-awesomes doesn't understand squat.
TRUE FACT IS FACT!

I had a female sim eat watermelon 3 times during her pregnancy.  It's all she had in her inventory.
No apples at all.  I think she sneaked in leftover lime pancakes when I wasn't paying attention and had a life fruit once.

She had a boy.  D'oh, I was hoping for a girl.

I just have the Sim eat the fruit straight from her inventory.  No fuss, no muss, no worrying about whether they'll use the right fruit when cooking.

So...if I'm reading that correctly; if the initial random number for gender is high enough it doesn't matter how many apples or watermelons are eaten.  That certainly explains the odd instances of the pregnant sim subsisting solely on apples/watermelons and getting the wrong gender.

Oh sod it. I have a pair of sims with three boys. No more, said I, until the youngest boy is at school.

Now there are two slots left in the family and she's got the fertility buff, she sits of the couch watching kids' programmes and scoffs watermelon constantly. It had better bloody work!  :D

I want twin girls!

You're not.  The specs are pretty simple.

Chance of a boy = 50%.
Change after eating one serving = 15%.
Maximum change = 50%, to either 0% chance of a boy, or 100% chance.

The 50% limit is probably just to permit some indecision.  I.e. you can eat 100 servings of apples, and your Boy chance will still be only 100%.  Thus you can eat 7 servings of Watermelon and get 0% of a Boy afterward.

3 servings of anything = 45% chance, so you really need 4 to be absolutely sure.  I've done sex selection several times now, and it's reliable.  What can trip you up is you Sim eating things you don't realize have the wrong fruit, either deliberately or on their own.  Or simply not eating enough, early enough.  If you start on day 2, when they typically roll the "Have Boy" or "Have Girl" Wish, they won't get hungry enough to eat 4 times on their own.

Fruit Parfait and French Toast contain Apples, but don't say so in the descriptor.  Eggs Machiavellian contains watermelon.  Stu Surprise can contain either, and you'll never know because the name doesn't change.  Ditto Peanut Butter and Jelly.

It appears that your Sims check their inventory before checking the refrigerator.  So if you're going to cook something that includes a random fruit (Pancakes or Cobbler) that does say, put the right fruit in the cook's inventory and put the wrong fruit in the refrigerator.

 - Gus

I can't count how many games I've started and stopped and restarted and so forth.  So I can't count how many babies my sims have had.  It's got to be at least 10.  Not a single girl.

Since I didn't have the option to give my sims a double-Y chromosome, I have to assume it's something I can't see.  Is this just a freak of sadorandomness?

Eat less apples, and MOAR watermelons.

Does that actually have an effect? 

Yes. Search the forum. Search is your friend.

I "knew" that, and still didn't think of all those damn apple pancakes. Damn. Does it work that way too? I guess I was thinking it was if you just ate apples and watermelon raw.

This thread needs to be appended to the "Choose Sex of BAbbies" thread.

I am going to burninate all the apple trees in my 'hood.  The key problem with the "just boys" issue is that the bloody apple trees are obsequious ubiquitous, and one of the first bloody things your sim can grow.  Consequently, everyone has one.  I have yet to even SEE a watermelon in my game.

Edited for word correction.

As much as I love the mental image of obsequious apple trees, I think you mean ubiquitous.  :D

I believe I bitched about this issue in the original thread. It should have at least been limes or lettuce, which are available from level 0. Though, in RV, I have not found many harvestables outside of the community garden area.

The "ubiquitous / obsequious" thing has been noted. :) I knew that you meant, though.

An obsequious apple tree is probably related to Shel Silverstein's Giving Tree. (I didn't own or read the book as a 0 or 6, so I'm just guessing the author name; my memory is not that great today. I blame the bug bombs.)

Quite so.  Thank you.  I have tried to correct my earlier phrase in a manner that preserves the image you mention.

 Is there something to the way the sims choose which fruit to use in cooking that compounds the obsequious-ness of apples in food?  Do they always  make apple pancakes because apple starts with a and eating the things out of your fridge alphabetically somehow makes evil-random sense?

Not sure what map you're playing, but in SV there is a tiny beach cove area near a really nice white colored home that has some watermelon vines which occasionally come to harvest status. I frequent the area for bugs, fish, and gems. Not sure if you were deliberately looking for watermelons, but I'd figure I'd mention it. :)

I looked at all the thread titles and didn't see one that looked like it addressed gender of babby.  My apologies.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,15067.0.html (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,15067.0.html)

There is also a watermelon vine behind the SV Science Facility, in the little garden in back.

In Riverview, there are watermelons in the community garden, as well as in the farm houses on the edges of the neighborhood (playable households).

All this, naturally, depends on whether my sim ever gets past first base with any female sim, which seems an unlikely prospect in the near future, considering the way he lives his life.  He has no social wants apart from being good friends with witch.  On the other hand, I think witch is angling for Trepie, considering the way she alternately flirts with and insults him.  Maybe they'll spawn and I'll switch playable status to them when my sim dies alone and childless.

Just for the record, no one has few people have double Y chromosomes. Typically, males have XY and females XX.

Edited for MOAR correctness.

Well, technically, there are freaks of nature that can end up with abnormal chromosome arrangements, but those people are basically fucked up by it.

I just looked it up. Apparently, in the case of XYY, it's not a further upfuckation than increased chance of having a learning disability.

No they can make grape pancakes too.  I just buy a bunch of the fruit of choice, put it in the pregnant Sims's inventory, and allow her to eat nothing else but that fruit from her inventory through her entire pregnancy.  Except if I'm going for a boy, I will allow her apple pancakes - but that's about when she'll make GRAPE pancakes instead.  I just do the watermelon or apples in the inventory method and it hasn't failed me yet.

Probably because the Y chromosome doesn't do a whole lot, being that it is small and shrivelled and contains very little information.

Yep; Y chromosome lacks of vital parts, thus needs to be backed up by at least 1 X chromosome. Embryos with YY or Y0 never go past the very first part of the pregnancy and are always miscarried.

OK, totally off topic, but how would you get an embryo without an X component anyway. I thought all fertile females were XX and therefor the eggs must be X and all embryo's have an X component?

Genetic malfunctions, basically. It's not supposed to ever happen, but biological processes are complicated and prone to errors, and sometimes things just go horribly wrong.

Sometimes you make a bad egg with no x in it at all.  Daddy's spermy may have a y in it, in which case the baby never makes it, ever.  If daddy's spermy has an x, then you get Turner's syndrome with a baby who has a webbed neck and will be sterile.

That is because when cooking, Sims chose the ingredients in their inventory first, then fridge ingredients. So, say you had a bunch of apples & watermelon in your fridge. You want a girl, so you drag watermelon into her inventory. When she cooks, if applicable, she will use the watermelon. If she has apples in her inventory, drag them out.

Edited for typo.

So if every sim and her dog can grow apples but watermelons have to be sought out, what does this do for the gender ratio in a neighbourhood where you make no attempt to control things?  It seems to me, if you play without knowing this information, given the ubiquity of apples (as Jolrei pointed out, though not quite in those words), aren't we going to get a sort of China Syndrome where there are more male babies born than female?  If you ask me, this is offensive to feminists.  OTOH, I got bored with the game and am not playing, so apologies if my information is wrong because of my lack of experience.

I'm unclear why this particular bit has gone uncorrected for so long in this thread.  You can buy watermelons in the store, they're not difficult to obtain.  Sure, you get apple seeds for free when you reach Gardening 1, but buying or growing watermelons is hardly difficult.

A slightly more significant issue is that the best breakfast, French Toast, contains apples and doesn't advertise it.  If you're the sort of player who finds eating lobster for breakfast inappropriate, it's not hard to end up with only male offspring if you're not paying attention.
 
 - Gus

When I wanted a female sprog I made the pregnant sim eat nothing else but what she had in inventory, which incidentally was watermelons. It's not hard at all: keep feeding the preggo so she never happens to be that hungry she raids the fridge, and you're set.

Huh, did you have apples in your inventory when you made the waffles? I have been wondering about that but haven't gone back in to test that. Whenever I direct someone to make pancakes, they make apple pancakes and I *think* it uses an apple out of their inventory. I have been meaning to check and see if they don't have an apple in inventory or the fridge if they will just make pancakes.

How did "French Toast" become "Waffles?"  French toast, unlike pancakes and cobbler, won't take just any fruit.  It requires 2 apples and 1 egg.  The "use ingredients from inventory first" rule is irrelevant, French Toast always contains apples.

 - Gus

*Shakes head
I have no idea how french toast became waffles! Sorry!
I didn't realize you were talking about the ingredients rather than a flavoring! Like apple pancakes or apple waffles like I keep getting in my game.

My sims often make pancakes with watermelon, grapes or even limes. I wonder how they choose the ingredient, at random? (This is when also apples are available)

Mandapotpie, waffles don't feature fruit of any sort. Look at the skill journal of any of your sims who has cooked them. Egg only.

I'm unclear as to how a "pancake" incorporates such an ingredient to begin with, really. Is this some definition of "pancake" I am unfamiliar with?

I envision it as similar to a blueberry or chocolate chip pancake.  Grapes probably would work, but watermelon definitely wouldn't.  The liquids would throw off the chemistry of the thing.

I eat my meatspace pancakes and waffles with butter and applesauce (jam if no applesauce is available) on top. Would that count?

I think this is a play on the old wives tale that if a woman's pregnant stomach looks like a watermelon, she's going to have a girl. The other half of that tale is that if the tummy looks like a basketball it'll be a ball. An apple would be an edible approximation for a basket ball being that it is more rounded than oblong.

Personally, I've had a fair difference between gender of babies. My Sim favoring apples and having a lesser amount of watermelon while having girls, and vice versa.
Perhaps chance is just against everyone? I've seen a number of times where people would get 10 boys in a row, and only get a girl near the 15 mark.

I'm not sure how much effect foods cooked WITH apples/watermellons have. I've found very reliable results from having the sims eat raw apples or raw watermelons straight from their inventory. So far, that has always produced the desired gender of the child.

It doesn't matter whether it's pure apples/watermelons or as an ingredient - the effect is the same.  5% additional chance per eaten item, up to a maximum of 15% (max chance 65% for a particular gender).

Also, you have to eat the apples or watermelons in the first trimester of pregnancy as the gender is chosen when the pregnancy starts to show.  All the sim men in my family are doctors and they have been able to ascertain the gender as soon as their wife started to show.

Oooo...that explains why the fruit thing never works for me. I normally make them scoff 3 apples/watermelon on the final day.

I'm guessing it only affects the family you're playing. At least, the Sim I'm currently playing is quite the romancer and now has 20 children by random neighbourhood women. (I'm waiting to see which child grows up looking the least retarded before I pick a successor.) Of those children, 8 are boys and 12 are girls. Obviously this isn't a scientific trial, but seeing as apples are so ubiquitous as a food ingredient, you'd expect the number of boys to be much higher.

Actually, has anyone tested this out, or is it possible to tell from the XML whether it makes a difference to families which aren't being played...? I'm pretty curious now, it's not something I'd considered before.

You're pulling those numbers out of your ass.  The XML clearly says 15% per item, not 5%, and the maximum change is 50%, not 15%.  Since the base is 50% male, you can get 100% male by eating 4 apples, or 100% female by eating 4 watermelons.

I've had no trouble forcing whatever gender I want.

 - Gus

I am not convinced at all. I have a legacy family in the 17th gen and all they have ever had is boys. Try as I might to eat watermelon it makes no difference. Still no girls.

Have you tried shoving the watermelons up your twat?

Why? Has that worked for you?

Yes and it's fun too.

Do your Sims eat pancakes? Make sure they NEVER buy apples, they never have apples in their inventory, anything. Apples can sneak into a lot of recipes and cause boys. Also, for the watermelons to work, you have to eat it in the FIRST trimester of pregnancy. If you do it right after they change into maternity and start rubbing their tummy, then it should work. Something is definitely wrong, either way. The gender ratio should be about 50/50. After 17 generations, SOMETHING is wrong for you to not have had a single girl. Your Sims are sneaking apples when you're not looking. Watch your pregnant Sims like a hawk and turn off autonomy if you have to.

Also, sticking pineapples up your twat is what all the cool kids are up to. Trust me on this.

This is false.  You can eat the fruits (either type) any time during the pregnancy, from conception right up to delivery.  If it were the first trimester only, several of my gender-determination attempts would have failed.  The usual ways people fail at this are to not eat enough (you need 4 servings of fruit to guarantee a gender) or to eat things which contain the wrong fruit but which don't advertise it (Stu Surprise, French Toast, Eggs Machiavelli).

Pancakes and cobbler always contain fruit, but they say which fruit in the name (i.e. Apple Pancakes or Watermelon Pancakes).

 - Gus

Meh. The debate is still raging as to when exactly you need to eat the fruit. See posts about 5 above mine. But you're right, I should have added the number you need to eat. I bet that's where Mazza went wrong.

"The debate is still raging" my arse.  I've run 20+ gender-determinations and never had a problem, and there's no way it's restricted a single trimester / day.  I've always spaced my 4 servings of fruit over 2-3 days.  Not once have I fed them all at once.

You're referring to this:
Before they start to show, not after as you suggested.  Which is definitely false, since I've almost always started sex-determination when the bump shows in the 2nd trimester, which is when the Sims roll the gender preferences for spawn.

My guess?  There's a Heisenberg effect.  That is, performing the doctor gender-check forces the game to decide baby gender then, rather than at birth.  Next time I have a doctor in the family, I'll test this.

 - Gus

Just wanted to post that there is a mod (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=349502) that disables the apple/watermelon gender determination, for those who prefer the baby gender to be fully random.

The new EAxis patch seems to disable it as well, though the patch notes specify in "prepared foods" so you may not want to feed a bunch of raw apples to your pregnant sim just yet.

Really?! Then I guess we'll need a mod that enables it then :-/

I have all the patches and no mods in my game.  My Sim is in the final trimester.  It is certain that she is having triplets. 

It is also certain at this point that she will have 3 girls.  If I have her eat 4 apples, it changes the scenario and she will have 3 boys.  I had her alternate 4 apples and 4 watermelons and she had girls.  What I do find interesting though is that during the day her husband gets a call to hang out.  Its always the same two persons calling, a man = the girls and a woman = the boys. 

This is my first multiple birth in the game and I am wondering if all twins are the same gender? 

Yes all multiple births tend to be the same gender.
There is a way to change that however by interacting with a doctor sim.
Doctors can find out the gender of the baby.
Perform this interaction on a pregnant sim with twins or triplets on the way and the gender of baby 1 is locked in when the doctor tells you what it is.
The remaining baby or babies can still have their gender altered by food.

Gus has a post all about this called Schrödinger's Baby http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,16110.0.html

Thanks poi_boi.