More Awesome Than You!

Ok, I have reloaded Pleasantville seven times.  Two times with base game,three times with Uni, and twice with NL.  Every time(except this time) Brandi Brokes third child was a boy with black hair and blue eyes.  He looked just like her.  So, this last reinstall the baby was a girl and had green eyes(still an infant so I don;t know what color hair she has).  Has NL changed this?   Cause the last that I knew, Brandi always has a boy as the thrid child.  Has anyone else had a different third child?

There's a reason for this. Pre-NL, Skip Broke was classified as "unlinked". This meant that Brandi's last child was always treated as "self-pollination", where all the simDNA comes from a single parent and the gender is always the reverse of the parent.

Post-NL, they appear to have resolved the wigginess of partly-mulched sims, and so Skip Broke's DNA is being tapped again.

Hmm odd

I played the Broke house brand new after NL install and Brandi still had her little clone.

However I do believe I had resurrected Skip at that time before she had him..no idea if that made a difference or not.

Me too, I'd resurrected Skip, and the third child was still the boy who looks like Brandi.  (I always give him blond hair, though, I always think he looks much better as a blond!)

I had reinstalled when NL was released and I got the clone also--but thinking back on it he did look slightly different--not much.  It was the reinstall after it.  I hope she doesn't look like Skip.  I miss Chad.  Maybe I'll have her pollinate herself so I can get Chad back.  Thanx JM.  That explains it. 

Clone here as well and it was before I ressurected Skip.  I guess everybody is missing him! :D

I reinstalled after NL and Brandi's third was the clone too, at least I thought so. I assumed it would be the black haired, grey eyed boy so I haven't looked at him very closely. It's possible he could have Skip's green eyes instead and I haven't closely looked at his facial structure either to see if there are any differences this time. Perhaps I should load up the game and take a close look at him. I haven't resurrected Skip so I don't know either if that makes a difference.

Edit- took a close look at Robert (Brand's third kid) and physically he seems the same. Black hair, grey eyes and similar facial structure to the Robert I had before the reinstall. But his personality is varied from Brandi's now, where before in my Pleasantview the previous Robert had the same exact personality as Brandi.

I never even entered the Broke house until after installing NL, and I hadn't resurrected Skip either.  She had the little clone, who I named "Stone", following the Broke family tradition of ridiculous names.  It ends with him, btw, as there is no way I'm going to name any third-generation children either "Flat" or "Skip".  Although, I'm a little tempted, if twins appear again, to name them "Skip" and "Stone" . . .

My third child has never had the same peronality as Brandi, he's either been a Libra or a Leo, usually Leo.  And when a Leo, he's only ever had one point for niceness!  All, the same, he's probably my favourite Maxis character when a Leo, as a Libra he's a wuss, so if I get Libra I change him in SimPE!

I've heard that they fixed the Strangetown DNA too.  But it only show up on new Strangetown neighborhoods after NL.

In my case the problem I have is after I ressurected Skip, if I make Brandi and Skip have another child, no matter what I do they always end-up with a boy.  I did a back-up prior doing this:  I made them have 3 other child no matter how many times I reloaded the lot to have another gender all 3 were boys, I quit the game reloaded.... nothing could change that.  I guess with him she can only have boys, I know with other sims she can have both.

Did any of you tried to have other children with that couple and did you also ended-up with boys only?

Brandi Broke in my custom hood and Skip Broke in  my custom hood are gentic clones of the original and their thirdchild together was a girl

I will try it another time but this time will make sure another Sims gets a baby before she does.

Thanks Banglenuts, I am sure now they can finally have a baby girl.

I had the thre boys in my cloned game since Skip wasn't resurrected at that point and Brandi had had the third child, so I just cloned all of them.  She hasn't had another child since, so I don't know what it will be, and if I wasn't really busy in another hood I'd go back and find out!  Something to bear in mind though!

So far still no success in getting a girl in original Pleasantview with Skip and Brandi... *Doh!* I think I am gonna cry...  She did had girls with other male Sim I matched her in the past but my game won't give me a girl for that particular couple.

I am gonna forget about the idea since I am getting really upset... Anyway, she have 4 boys now (well actually she had 8 but I did not kept them) which is a lot more children than my Sims normally have, she should be really happy with that, gne!

Why me!!!  :'( (Sorry, I needed to sound pathetic)

After I brought back Skip I tried for a baby with them (hoping for a girl of course)  Nope.  TWIN BOYS.  I never had them try again.

Well, she could always cheat on him with Don - she had a girl when she was married to him in my game!

She Just had a baby girl as her 3rds child with Skip's genetic clone in my custom hood
.Brandi is a genetic clone in my custom hood and Beau and Dustin are there and her newborn daughter thast sim enhancer indicates will be black haired and green eyed with skips skintone

I actually think a lot depends on how many other baby girls there are compared to boys in the neighbourhood.  If most other babies and toddlers are boys, then you have a greater chance of a girl.  At one time, for instance, I thought that gay male couples could only adopt boys, as that's all they ever seemed to get, but recently I've had one or two girls adopted by gay males, so I think it's really all just a matter of statistics (and chance).  But if, for example, you move a male townie into your game, and don't have notownieregeneration, then the replacement townie will probably be male.

So, before you get Brandi pregnant, you could try going into CAS and creating a family with three or four toddlers (all boys) (or maybe a couple of families!) and see whether this alters the balance enough.

at the moment my neighborhood is dominated by a run of girls being born The births are as follows girls:Lauren,Cynthia,Lisette,Yvonne,Yvette,Andrea,Diana ,Theresa,Eternity and Alexis. Boys: Nathan,Eric,Dante,Martin and Patrick 15 Babies   10 girls 5 boys. CAS Toddlers Elaine,Annette,Amanda and Janey
  Boys: Thomas,Bobby and Beau  . however Imused to getting strings of a certain sex only for it to reverse and go the opposite direction

Well, seems as though the game just counts, say to 5, then changes to the opposite sex, I haven't actually checked my game for numbers, but it probably follows that kind of pattern.  Maybe now I have the awesome new lot counter toy installed, I'll keep better track of things like that.

Considering how by repeating the same birth over an over again (without saving) you usually get both girls and boys, it seems unlikely the game makes the decision based on the number of male and female sims in the neighborhood. It appears completely random in my opinion. I've repeated twin and triplet births for countless of times, with different results on every try (when I've been trying to get a certain combination of genetics, mostly to get green-skinned but non-ugly babies  :D)

I've never actually had an ugly alien baby in my game - but some of them turn into really wierd toddlers!  And maybe if you have a fairly even number of both sexes, the game will make random choices, but I must say I have noticed there tend to be runs of first one sex and then the other, just haven't noticed how many before it changes.

Well, some alien babies are born without noses...matters on your definition of ugly, doesn't it. Some of those alien toddlers are freakish looking.

All my alien babies look exactly the same!  And I've never had one without a nose!  But occasionally I've had a toddler with a very tiny nose, and it's come as a complete surprise because, as I say, as babies they looked just the same as all the others.

The one time I had an alien baby born from an abduction, the baby had normal sim features and didn't show the flat nose or ugly eyes until he turned into a toddler. This is how it's apparently planned to be. However, when this baby grew up and had kids himself, you could clearly see which baby had inherited some of the alien facial features and which had not. This doesn't seem to happen with any other extreme facial features, which only express themselves on toddlers and older, but children and grandchildren of sims with alien features seem to express them since infancy. Odd.

I've had a few alien babies with no nose, and you can tell, right from the birth. And the ones that do have noses, you can also tell from the birth.

I dont play the aliens in my game a bit to far into the Sci fi world for Me. however some non alien babies have a freakish or odd appearance like the toddler you showed the other night. just depens upon the genetics the toddler inherits and the sex of the toddler.Ive seen a few female toddlers look quite masculine in appearance.

I guess it takes two to tango, at sometimes the tango goes wrong?  ::)

Maybe it depends on whether the non-alien parent had a reasonable sized nose?  Now, Kumai Tellermann has a daughter and Joe Carr has twins, one of each, in my game, (wasn't it evil of me to put the hacked telescope so near to the car portal?) and all three have fairly normal noses - so far!  Maybe they'll grow into teens with huge beaks!

one never knows unfortunate since most children have fairly average noses whether they will become huge beaks or not in the teen age years

I've done some experiments in my game by creating parents with outrageous noses, but the babies born to them didn't yet show any sign of it. I've only seen babies expressing alien features specifically, the features they inherited from the sim that was born from an abduction pregnancy.

I wish I knew how to upload pics here, to show you a picture of Zen Whyte, he may be a half-alien Knowledge sim, but male romance sims fall for him with 3 lightning bolts, although I can't achieve that with his wife.  He's really quite nice-looking, and I didn't use the plastic surgery table on him (it wasn't available when he grew up and got married, and now I definitely wouldn't want to change him!)

I have noticed that how a child looks largely depends on how the genetics mix

So far my fourth generation toddlers have such awful facial features.  Astro and Haley are twins;  Astro looks evil and has alien features from his grandfather, but he has normal skin.  Haley has alien skin but has poofy cheeks and otherwise normal features.  Vivian is their cousin and her parents are the cutest people, but she has scrunched up eyes and high cheekbones like her cousins.   ???

Same grandfather Maybe?

Never mind, the plastic surgery table can cover it all up - until the next generation!

If my reinstall hadn't nuked all my photos (...sigh...) I would have a picture of poor little Valecia... I had made her parents in CAS early on when the game first came out, and since the thumbnail portraits didn't change then, I never noticed that her dad had a normal nose from the front, but it was pretty much completely flat from the side.

I noticed she seemed to have no nose at all in profile when I redid her hair with the mirror as a toddler... hmm, maybe it'll grow out when she gets older. Oooh, it didn't. It was really high, and completely flat - sort of an alien or orc nose, though I don't have any aliens in my game, heh. She had a little brother by then, and he'd gotten his mother's nose, and he looked fine as a kid, but after I'd installed Uni his nose and mouth somehow appeared closer together.

I'd killed the kid and given her a nosejob and was going to avoid letting her have kids, but by now I'm reconsidering. I want more than pretty Sims! So I had her resurrect her brother after she went through college and made it part of a storyline. I kinda wish I could get her old nose back now, but oh well, maybe I'll give her kids anyway. They already live in the "poor little stone cottage in the woods", now there can be noseless creepy Sims running around there too! *horror movie music*

I sometimes stick Cassandra there when she's really got up my nose!

Has anyone had Consort have another child?  If you haven't--Don't!!  I had a gorgeous romance Sim marry him--for his money of course.  The daughter had her mother's beautiful eyes,skin,and hair but Consort's gawd aweful mouth and cheek bones.  Really sucked--now what am I suppose to do with her??  Titiana had gorgeous twin daughters with a gorgeous custom sim.   I thought that they were identical till they became children and the oldest has her mother's rather large beak but the younger one has her father's cute nose.  When they were children,  I dressed them in the same outfit and couldn't tell them apart or less they were playing chess, once they were teens, they got their own outfits so I only have to remember who is wearing what.  I will find out tonight what brandi's daughter looks like as a tot.  Wish me luck.

Brand i and skips daughter in my Game has black hair and green eyes  a cute little tyke but she favors daddy

Here is the third child in my game, a son named Ben. He's shown here with his wife, sim Rainbow  :D He looks exactly like Brandi. I don't see any Skip in him at all.

(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/Joe%20ezboard%20graphics/weddingdarts.jpg)

Vivian's mother and the twins' father are siblings, but Vivian is not blood related to the twins' maternal grandfather...God I have such a messed up family tree.   :-\

He never looks like that in my game!  As soon as he's a kid he gets blond hair, and when he's a teen he gets the Maxis custom hair with the mauve streak in it, and the eyeshadow with the squiggle at the end, plus shiny lipstick!  I always make him Romance and he nearly always gets the LTW to Have 20 Simultaneous Loves.  He's usually quite grouchy (only 1 nice point) and varies from 1 - 3 in neatness, is totally outgoing and fun-loving and adores making nuisance calls to Mortimer Goth!  Despite all that, he's quite my favourite sim, and if I'm in a custom hood, or Strangetown or anywhere where he isn't, I always create a sim as much like him as possible!

Funny, he's a ridiculously nice family sim in my game.  :D

Probably the Libra version, then.  I usually get the Leo!  And, although he's grouchy, and occasionally attacks a trashcan, he has more friends than any sim I've ever played!

I tried that yesterday before I posted, I even had 2 other couples pregnant and 1 had 2 twins boys and the other one 1 boy.  So I said to myself there is plenty of boy now let's try with Brandi again, try 5 times without saving after she got pregnant (I got her pregnant and speed up the prengnacy) and all 5 times it was boys....

EDIT:  I wanted to attach 2 aliens picture I have but have no idea either how to upload them in here anymore.  1 is the son of Dirk Dreamer, the other one is Don Lothario's daughter.  Both are aliens teens.

I use www.photobucket.com which is free. After you upload your pictures, it looks like this and you can cut and paste the url info into your post:

(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a303/SimmieCal/photobucket.jpg)

Thanks Simmiecal but I notice .pdf files are allowed so I transform my .jpg into .pdf.

So here it goes, 1st one is a picture of Dirk son Ziggy, I put both on the picture so you can see that Ziggy did get a lot of Dirk facial features, except for alien skin, he does quite look a lot like his father.  Ziggy is a teen romance Sim.

2nd one is Don Lothario's daughter Evelyn standing next to her father.  She did get more of the alien features but did also get Don facial features, she is a teen popularity Sim.

In case you wonder, in my avatar, it is a picture of Dustin Broke and Cassendra Goth, I age down Cassendra to a teen and she went to college, that is where she met Dustin and fell madly in love with him.  They have a kid together but will have more later.  Right now I have 16 different families I play in Pleasantview and all of them did have kids.

[404'ed!]

Most of my alien sims are born with no noses...if the father has a huge nose it sometimes balances out to a normal looking nose.  Poor Michiko was my first alien that actually had no nose to speak of..it was completely indented into her head.  Darren Dreamer is/was her father.  She was my ugliest alien ever but she grew up to be half way decent.  She ended up going to college with townie Randy London and they have kids together now that have their father's nose, which is rather pleasant.  Human skins though with those huge eyes.

All of Brandi's kids after Dustin & Beau looked the same for the most part.  They're pretty nice looking...except all the boys are teens right now and have a horrible case of acne lol

Heath:

(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y23/mzskandelouslala/heath.jpg)

And the twins, Garret & Riley

(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y23/mzskandelouslala/gar.jpg)
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y23/mzskandelouslala/1ri.jpg)

I just started a thread over at SimFreaks Forum which some of you might be interested in, and you don't need Photo-Bucket (which I once tried to use and found I couldn't as it was full, so I gave up) to upload pics.

I've just restarted Pleasantview and Brandi had the usual black-haired, grey-eyed boy, but this time he definitely has Skip's DNA as well.  I was quite busy before starting, altering all the DNA so it was accurate.  I also made new versions of all the children in CAS then cloned them onto the originals so they really were the genetic kids of their parents and not clones or CAS-made.  The new Cassandra & Alexander are much better-looking than the old ones (Alexander is so hot I made him Romance!), but Dustin & Beau (particularly Beau) are a lot like the originals and so is Dirk Dreamer.  Angela & Lilith are totally different (no huge noses for one thing) and I gave them red hair even though they would definitely have had black (so would Dustin & Beau, for that matter). I've even given recessive alien skin & eyes to the Caliente sisters.  Dina will be getting pregnant shortly as she'll be marrying Mortimer (haven't much choice, they somehow managed to get themselves 3 lightning bolts) so I'm waiting to see whether anything alien comes out.

There have been two births in my game so far, Brandi's was the first and the second was Cassandra, who has just had a little girl to Darren.  This mirrors what happened in my original Pleasantview, although that time Cassandra's first daughter was Don's.  The only difference is that the order has changed - when I first played Cassandra gave birth first, which was why I let Brandi go first this time, thinking that it would start with a girl again.

For the record, Brandi's third in my original game is an extremely nice Family Sim, who has six kids, 5 of whom are boys (twin boys, twin girl & boy, two single boys).  His personality is 36449 (Libra) and in my new version he's a 38636 Aries.  Oddly enough, he came out Aries even though I used the Randomiser on the LotDebugger, yet I forgot to use it with Cassandra's and hers came out a 42976 Sagittarian.  I can see where the 4276 has come from (they all match-up) but quite how she's got 9 in Active I have no idea, or even why she was Sagittarius in the first place.  Maybe the game has started randomising more or something.  I'm already puzzling over what Aspiration to give her because nothing really goes with her personality.  There's not really anything suitable for really active Sims, so she'll probably end-up Family or Romance or something.  She's certainly nothing like Desdemona, their daughter in my original game, she's a 44449 Pisces and hopelessly in love with JM Pescado.  I might have to go back there just to see what sort of kid they end-up with.

Yes, I agree about active sims like Sagittarius, although Fortune is possible, as they can get the Athletic Career LTW.  I would like it if they made a Health and Fitness aspiration for sims like that, LTWs could include "Stay at peak fitness for 20 days" or "Be personal Trainer to 50 different sims"!

I just restarted Pleasantview as well, and I did extensive editing in SimPE first, making sure that the correct Skip was referenced in all of Brandi and Dustin's memories.  She just had her third child, and it's a girl!  She has blonde hair and gray eyes.  She is still a baby, but I peeked at her personality, and she is an Aries, with 10 Neat, 10 Outgoing, 5 Active, 4 Playful, and 6 Nice.  I used the Lot Debugger to randomize the sim generator before she was born. 

I think that if people are still having boys after resurrecting Skip, they probably don't have him properly linked as the father of Brandi's child.  If the game is not finding Skip's DNA, then the child will always be a black-haired, gray-eyed boy who looks like Brandi, as in the pic Brynne posted above.  This is essentially a self-pollination, as JM calls it.  He looks just like Brandi's third child in my first Pleasantview game, just a different hairstyle.  So if Skip is properly linked as the child's father, even if the child turns out to be a boy, he should have one green and one gray gene for eyecolor, and one black and one blonde gene for haircolor.  I didn't change Brandi's DNA, and she carries one black and one blonde hair gene.  So with Skip's blonde genes, the child has a 50/50 chance of having blonde or black hair.

I'm pretty sure that Pescado said that babies' gender is totally random, and has nothing to do with how many babies of either gender your neighborhood already has.  The only exception would be if you self-impregnated your sim using the TL&D or InSim or similar.

No, with one black and one blonde gene, the child should always express black hair, or otherwise something has been dramatically changed about Maxis genetics. Black and brown are always dominant over blonde and red. Even with Skip's genes available, she should have black hair if Brandi is the mom. The eye color could be either green or gray since those are equal.

Since Brandi has one black and one blonde gene, then she can pass either one to the child.  Since she would get one blonde gene from Skip, then if she got a blonde gene from Brandi, then she would express blonde hair since she would be homogenous for blonde.  If she got a black hair gene from Brandi instead, then she would have black hair since black is dominant over blonde.  Therefore, the child has a 50/50 chance of having black or blonde hair, depending one which gene she gets from Brandi.

The Brandi in my game has two genes for black hair. Are you sure you haven't edited her genes? All of the Maxis created sims that I know of have homozygous genes for all features.

When have you installed your game, and do you have Nightlife? I wonder if her genes have been changed with Nightlife or something, but with my installation she definitely had only black hair genes the last time I checked which was before Nightlife.

I do have NL.  I don't remember changing her genes, but I could have.  I made a lot of changes in SimPE before playing the game, and I can't remember for sure now what all I did!  I must have changed hers because I looked at the original neighborhood file, and it shows her as homogenous.  So I'm sorry for the confusion.  However, the child should still have black and blond hair genes and green and gray eye genes.  I do remember changing Brandi now; I wanted to see if I could get a blonde haired child.  I just changed so much other stuff that I forgot.

The original neighborhood files are found here:

Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods

I just copied them over to an empty neighborhood slot and batch-renamed all the files from N001* to N004* (to preserve my existing Pleasantview).

Ahh, ok, that makes sense then. Yes, the child should still have the genes for both blonde and black hair, although she can only express black hair. It would be cool if there could be more variety in hair colors, and a child from black and blonde haired parents could have hair color somewhere in between, not just one or the other. Kind of like with the Maxis skin tones. Maybe in Sims 3 some day?

If black and brown were always dominant, I think something must have changed about the genetics.  I have two CAS sims, blond and black-haired, respectively, with three children.  The twins are black-haired, and the third child is a blond.

That is strange.  Can you look at their genetics to see what genes they have?

I'll try, except I'm not sure what to look for.  I've never edited, nor even looked at, sim DNA before.

In SimPE I've got loaded the Sim Description of one of the sims, and the last tab (More) has the option to open the DNA.  When I select this I see numerous entries that so far I find meaningless.

Would a screenshot help?

You could do that if you wanted to.  You can also check this guide here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=1423.0), it tells what the numbers mean, but it can be a bit technical for someone whose never used SimPE before.  I would be interested to see what the parents have first, then what the children inherited.

Basically, you want to look at these two strings (they may not necessarily be in order):

1 (dtString): 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435457: 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

The first one tells the dominant, or expressed hair color.  The second tells the recessive hair color.  In the first number I've shown, the 1 stands for black hair, and the 3 stands for blonde hair.  This is what it would look like for a heterozygous sim.  A homozygous sim would have the same thing on both lines.

With human monozygotic twins, it's perfectly possible for one child to be the clone of the mother and the other the clone of the father, if the embryo cell splits the wrong way.  So, with twins, a blond-haired child is possible, even if one parent only carried the gene for black hair, but otherwise, I would agree that it's not possible.  Brown hair, however, is another story, as many brown-haired adults were blond as children.  My brother, sister and I are all blond, but my parents had brown hair, but were blond as children.  And although blue eyes are recessive, we all have blue eyes, although my mother had brown.

Thanks for the link.  I'm comfortable editing the character descriptions and the clothing of sims and I've even fixed object integrity, but I haven't explored much else yet.

Given your description, Rainbow, this is definitely strange:

Black-haired parent:
1 (dtString) = 00000001 -0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435457 (dtString) = 00000001 -0000-0000-0000-000000000000

Blond-haired parent:
1 (dtString) = a2fd3017-468d-c45e-836e-e5a810ba0fc2
268435457 (dtString) = a2fd3017-468d-c45e-836e-e5a810ba0fc2

Black-haired twin 1:
1 (dtString) = a2fd3017-468d-c45e-836e-e5a810ba0fc2
268435457 = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

Black-haired twin 2:
1 (dtString) = a2fd3017-468d-c45e-836e-e5a810ba0fc2
268435457 = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

Blond-haired child:
1 (dtString) = a2fd3017-468d-c45e-836e-e5a810ba0fc2
268435457 = 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

I can see that neither parent carries a recessive gene of another hair colour.  I'll re-state that both are CAS sims, and created using the tools available (meaning I didn't clone them from any sim in the bin).  The blond parent is the one who gave birth, and he was definitely not stepping out on his husband, unless he got up to something while I was playing another household.  LOL

The children are where this appears to get weird:  their dominant and recessive genes are identical, and yet the twins have black hair and the youngest is a blond.  They're all children, by the way:  the twins are a couple of days from their Teen transition, and the youngest just became a Child.

That blonde hair is a custom hair color, so it is dominant. This explains why it can override the black hair gene in expression. Maxis blonde would not be dominant, however. (In this case, both black and custom are dominant, which makes them equal, and a sim with those genes can express either hair color)

Now I'm puzzled.  The hair of the blond parent doesn't show in SimPE, or in the game, as custom.

Here's a screenshot of his photo from SimPE.  God knows why he looks so lopsided; he's not that ugly in the game.  LOL

(http://pic5.picturetrail.com/VOL96/785566/8949532/123358205.jpg)


Edit:  now that I've thought about it, I may have used a custom hair colour when I first created him.  It was so long ago I don't remember, so I cannot say I definitely did not use a custom hair colour.  However, he's had this hair for (I think) as long as he's been in the game.  If I did use a custom hair colour, I must have changed it almost immediately.  I can't think of anything else that would explain it.

Yeah, that makes sense.  Thanks for looking into that.  I forgot about custom hair.  That explains those funny strings of letters and numbers instead of the long string of zeros like in my example above.

I had a male couple I created in CAS with two children (girls) who were blonde, as is one of the parents.  The other has black hair, but since same sex children cannot be created as the couple's own children, only as adopted, in CAS, this is of course to be expected.

However, the two grew up and went off to uni leaving both parents withvery little to do ( and since they are both romance, having nothing to do leads to finding something.....) so I went into SimPE and treated one as female.  The couple then had a baby of their own, who had blonde hair and was another female.  Both parents have only Maxis hair and clothes etc. I didn't have any custom content when I created them.

So, maybe it has something to do with children being born to same sex couples?

Was this child born to the blonde adult? Maybe it was a clone of himself, kind of like the Brandi Broke third child? That would explain the blonde hair and being of the opposite sex than the parent. I would like to see their DNAs in SimPE.

Yes, it was the blond sim who was the parent who gave birth to the daughter.  At present the game is in limbo so I can't load it into simPE and look, but it should be fairly simple to recreate the situation and check out the result.  I've got to reload my game as it's running out of RAM, so I can treat one of my gay blond males as female and see what happens!  (Poor thing, he'll almost certainly be another Romance sim, and it would need to be one with non-custom hair, so I may have to examine a few first, but I do have one gay male couple with no kids yet, also a female couple who are both knowledge and desperate for kids, so I could try with them, but I can't remember what their hair colour is offhand.

Well, Brandi's daughter turned into a tot.  She had black hair and green eyes.  It's hard to tell if she will look like Brandi or skip yet but I think she will probably look more like Brandi for what I see now.  Unfortunately,I can't play them till my Uni's graduate and they are Sophs right now.  I turned Mary Sue Olson(Oldie) and Daniel Pleasant into teens and sent them to college.  Can't play Dustin until Angela catches up and so it goes.  It's so funny, I had Dustin and Lilith show up on the Uni lot(inge's family business) and Dustin tryed to talk to Lilith(he had a want to be friends with her) and they disagreed-- next thing you know they are in an all-out brawl.  They had two fights and Lilith won both of them.  It must be because of the fight mod.  Daniel was on the same lot and he had a fight option so I clicked it and they had a fight of sorts--they just stood there with the dust but never touched each other I stopped it and Daniel was declared the winner.  Poor Dustin has three lost fights to memories and he isn't even a teen yet.

Strange, I've had Dustin married to Lilith in one game!  (Angela was dead in that version!)


Ignorant Bliss, I've checked every couple in this hood I can think of, and in every likely case so far, one has custom hair, or brown instead of black.  If you think any other combination than black/blond would be worth trying then I'll certainly try it.  My female couple is one blond, one brown, and I have a male couple with one black hair, the other has custom blond, (the black-haired one is distinctive, though as he has oriental features).

In the case of the blonde girl being born to the male couple, did one of them have custom hair?

When it comes to testing with Maxis hair, it doesn't matter if it's brown or black, because they are equally dominant, as well as blonde and red are equally recessive :).

No, to the first, there was no custom hair in my game back then.

So, seems like it's Priscilla and Pamela Pink are to become parents, without the telescope (I'd have to treat them as male for that to work too) and we'll see what happens!

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. 

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.(http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d76/Bangelnuts/177828ff.jpg)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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!

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. 

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.

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.

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

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

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!

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.

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!

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.

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!

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...

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!!

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).

That will be awesome!!  Thanx for the info.

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?

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.

I've been editing the Sim's DNA with the TS2 Enhanser and I have come across a lot of"mistakes".  I agree with IgnorantBliss that the Sim children are CAS.  There is no genetical way that Fricorth could be the genetic child to Jennial nnd Kvornan.  I also have found problems with children born into the game.  Misinformation in their genetic make up.  Mortimer and Belle's son(not Alex) said that his Dad had brown hair and his Mom had blonde hair--clearly not right.

Which explains why Keanu is the odd one out!  Possibly also explains the anomalies as to which Skip Brandi has memories of, and which one has relationships with his family!  However, I do wonder if Skip was the genetic father of Beau and dustin, and they altered Brandi to Blonde for the purpose - it would explain why whe is shown as being a blonde in their genetics file in SE.

Oh what a tangled web they weave, When Maxis practice to deceive!

I don't think you can tell from the DNA which hair gene is from the mom and which from the dad. Mortimer has brown hair genes, but the Bella Goth that is in Strangetown has black hair genes, so I can't imagine where that blonde gene came from. Are you sure you're looking at the right lines? Because sims born after installing University have their DNA in a different order.

Well, I shall never ever use simEnhancer again! Brandi is now invisible, and cannot keep a queue of just one instruction!  She is phonable, her file is sitting happily in my Characters folder, she can be summoned with the teleporter shrub and there is at least a plumbob, although the resident Brandi has none!  Her icon is a blank, and her picture when I switch to her doesn't exist!  She has also completely disappeared from the list in SimPE although other family members still have their normal relationships with her!  God knows how I get her back!!!!

(Luckily, I do have a back-up from before I let Simenhancer loose!)  Now, I wonder if I just replace the Family thumbnails file?????  Can't hurt to try!  Can it?

I've noticed haircolour DNA strangeness with Angela and Lilith Pleasant.  They should show one or the other haircolour genes (logically the recessive one) as black, from Mary Sue, but they don't.  They look like Dan -- I see nothing of Mary Sue in them -- so surely they're Dan's self-pollinations. 

Here are the haircolour strings for both twins:

1 (dtString) 00000004-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435457 (dtString) 00000004-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

The black haircolor could not be a recessive gene when red is the other one.

None of the Pleasantview children have the correct DNA they should from their parents. Lucy Burb is homozygous to brown hair even though her mom has black, and all her inherited skintone genes are S2, even though they should be S1 and S3. Alexander Goth is homozygous to black hair even though Mortimer's genes have brown hair, and Alexander's inherited skintone genes are both S1 even though Bella has darker skin. You can only expect the DNA rules to work for the sims that born after installing the game, really.

Ah, I see.   :)

Although Dustin & Beau have Skip's DNA only, they definitely ARE the product of both parents, even if they were made in CAS.  I cloned Brandi & Skip and made two sons out of them in CAS.  Although they are not exactly the same as the original, they are as near as makes no difference.  Dustin's thumbnail since becoming an adult is almost identical to his thumbnail in my original game and Beau is remarkably like the original Beau.  Lilith & Angela, however, are nothing like the originals and no matter how many faces I generated in CAS, none of them resembled the originals even slightly.  Lucy Burb isn't much like the original either (I'd say she was prettier).  Cassandra is much prettier (far more like Bella) and Alexander looks very like Mortimer, but better-looking.  He was quite the hottie as a teen, actually.

So that's why they made Brandi's DNA "NA" - so only Skip's would affect Dustin and Beau, and probably explains why Keanu is always a bit different at each incarnation!

Still don't see how to get my poor invisible, unclickable Brandi back, though!  Tried replacing the Family Thumbnails, but it didn't make any difference, so I guess I'll have to replace the whole Hood with the Back-up and hope SimEnhancer didn't screw that up too - and then I'll have to grow Lucy up all over again!

My Brandi has a little male clone as well.

Somewhere here in the thread its mentioned that you don't get these "NL Effects" if you just copy the neighborhood from Program Files.  So, the next time I decided to restart Pleasantview or any of the other neighborhoods, I should just delete the My Documents/EA Games and let the game generate a new one?  (after backing up the Downloads folder of course)

Yes.  You can rename your old one to a different number ( I use Oscar's Renamer - someone recommended it here at MATY and it does it pretty easily) so after you've generated the new Pleasantview you can have them all in the same folder.  But I'm not totally sure if the game will generate a new N001 if you already have other hoods.  Best to rename the whole Sims2 folder to something else (for example Sims2 A) then the game will generate a replacement of everything, and you can simply move the Pleasantview hood into the original game and either delete the new Sims2 folder or keep it as a vanilla game for building, renameing it Sims2 Build.  Then rename your game folder to Sims 2, and you should have your new Pleasantview, without losing your old one somewhere among a million files!

I used freshly regenerated "my doc" files and started Pleasantview over and Brandi still had a male clone(even with many reloads) but I was able to get Bella back easily so something worked! *laughs* atleast Brandi had a little girl for her 4th kid (after a couple reloads) before she seemed to be stuck giving birth to only males.


Oscar's Renamer works great! I just went thru each folder telling it to "replace" N001 with N005 and clicking "OK" after each folder was done (otherwise it dosen't save as I found out when I kept forgetting to hit "OK"  ::) ) and wala! I had a new neighborhood out of my customized Pleasantview *laughs* It would've taken less then 5 mins if I had a better memory  ;)

I found I actually had to save each set of changes.  But it's still great - I have about four versions of Pleasantview now, and I know I've another I'd like to keep that's in my laptop!

That's the other thing I've noticed.  I've heard of people resurecting Bella with the Nomitron.  But everytime I make Mortimer, Cassandra, or Alexander call up the Reaper her picture isn't there.  Guess that's something else I'm missing out on by doing things the old fashioned way.

I was able to resurect Skip Broke through the nomitron though.  But quit without saving.  Skip being back doesn't fit into my grand scheme.

You need to bring her back in with the tombstone of Life and Death first.  Exit the lot and Save.  When you go back in, it should say that Bella died on another lot, and her spirit will go back there.  You can resurrect her at that point.  NOTE:  You need Uni for resrect thingie and NL to bring back Bella, Skip, and Darla.

I would assume it has the same effect whether you just delete the Neighborhoods folder or the whole Sims 2 folder. I did the former, and let the game generate new neighborhoods, but Brandi's third son was still a clone. (By the way, just deleting one neighborhood won't regenerate anything, it seems the whole Neighborhoods folder has to be absent.)

I thought so, but wasn't sure.  Just seems to me that if you don't have a vanilla game, this is the easiest way to get one!  And worth it if you want to build houses to share, or even just for your own games.  That way, you know that whatever you put in the houses bin will be clean!

Who is Darla?

Darleen is ressurectable with Uni only since her tombstone is still there...

Well, accept the boy she is carrying, then marry her to Don - they had a daughter in my game.

DOH!!!!   I mean Darleen Dreamer.  I have Finding Nemo on the brain.  "First you were like Whoa!  Then we were like WHOAAAA!  Then you were like whoa."

LOL!

I resurrected Skip first thing when I reinstalled when getting NL and Brandi had a black-haired gray-eyed girl.   She is a cute toddler but I extracted her and looked at her in BS and she isnt good looking as a teen and adult.  I think I might try to clone my original 3rd Broke boy over her.  He may be Brandi's clone but at least he was cute as an adult. 

I looked at everyones DNA and I hate that they have Dna from no where.  At least if Maxis made them in CAS they should have used the "make child button" so that their DNA would be from their parents.  Veronaville seems to be the only hood that was almost done right, and I say almost bc most sims are still missing DNA strands and only the Monty family looks like they were  not done in CAS.

It annoys me that the female Capps who are married still have their own surname!

I just started playing Veronaville properly a few days ago, in previous installations my neighbour's lad has played in that hood, and imagine my surprise when a townie appeared with his name!  (Both first name and surname!  Not even mixed up!)