More Awesome Than You!

People talk about having really bad kids that bully other kids, but even if my kids arent nice at all and have all outgoing and grow up badly they seem to be wonderfully nice, so how can I get them to be horrible?

Also I heard that the lie-device/dectector thing (aspiration reward) encourages kids to be bad? Is this true?

Also what the hell does encouraging a kid do I havent seen any effects?

Umm...ok?

Anyway, the aspiration grow-up thing seems to affect elder life.  And then I'm not sure if the ages below adult even matter for that, or if it's only Adult --> Elder.

As for the lie detector machine, it build creativity.

Er, huh? I would be helpful if you put seperate topics on seperate paragraphs, because I'm not sure if that entire thing is all related...

Anyhow, sometimes the sim kids are nasty if they have low nice points, what with pranking and such. Some people let their sims run on a lot of autonomy, and even adult sims aren't that great about getting along with others! However, quite a lot of the percieved personalities of the sims is role-playing - it's the player's own imagination putting the fullness of the personality there.

The lie detector doesn't actually do anything but build creativity, the description is just flavour text (text added to make it more interesting). It's more of that role-playing business. :)

Hmm My Simmies all have personality ! just because I want them to so there! :P but seriously  sims have a base "personality" soley based on the points in each of the categores ,nice,neat active, outgoing,lazy, shy, grouchy or sloppy.
  Half the fun of playing the sims is that how much or how little story your sims have to  tell is based on the players imagination . the career and aspiration rewards ALL HAVE A "COLORFUL" description attached as does much of the maxian furniture but under neath  the imaginative description the real purpose of the object is always listed. the lie deetor machine's purpose? to build creativity , the teleprompter builds charisma and so on
   and  to answer your final question yes encouraging sim kids if done often enough can tweak their basic birth personality and in some cases build new interests

I recently read a rather convincing argument (using clones) that children growing up badly turn out less attractive - sunken faces, more prominant features and the like. </offtopic>

Ontopic:

As for bad kids, what kind of bad do you want? The closest sims get is pranks, pushing and shoving and arguing and stealing newspapers and dumping over trashcans... grouchy messy kids will do stuff like that if you direct them to or let them in the right circumstances.

Encouraging (enough of it) changes their points in those areas. If you have an ingame born sim with 10 neat and you'd rather not have a neatnik (altho it's quite handy really), you can encourage sloppiness and eventually bring them down. Takes awhile tho.

I wonder if likes adult, kids would be more "pranky" or grouchy if their fun is low (for teens and adults it is like that when their aspiration meter is low).

As for encouraging (is useful to change personality traits of a Sim), to have it at best, make sure parent and the child are bestfriends and that they are both in a good mood.
Depending on the difference of level between the child and parent (let's say child have 2 in neat and parent 5) with this type of difference it takes at least 7 or 8 times to have an improvement (a bar in the personality trait apear). Always make sure, that they're is an  head icon with a + over the child's head and that the action is completely finish before you start it again.
Let's say now an elder do the same thing, best friend with the child, same difference in level of cleaness, it will take the elder 5 or 6 times and if the difference is bigger (2 for child, 9 for elder) it takes even less (this apply to the adult/parent too). Mainly because of the age difference, the elder is more experience so he has more influence on a child or teen.

Maxis did not want it to be that easy to gain a personality level up or down, I would say it take approximately the same time as if you would study logic or any other skill for the child to get a new personnality trait.  This is one of the reason why Elders are useful in the game.

You can also modify any Sims interest by choosing in the "talk" option "talk about interest".  Let's say you want to match 2 Sims together making them talk about their interest together will raise common interest between those 2 making it easier for them to become friends/lovers.  You can also use magazine to achieve the same thing as long as you know what are both Sims interests.

and I thought talking about interests was just a good way to get the sims to hate each other- mine always react negatively

I also thought encouraging worked differently- in my experience, when a child is encouraged by a parent, they need to be encouraged three times before they gain another personality point (provided they like the parent enough to listen). I have not really noticed a difference with the elders in my game, but I have heard from many people that it's there.

Now THAT is interesting!  I often wonder why I'm growing toddlers/kids/teens up in platinum.  Other than the nice message about how they grew up great.  This would be a good incentive.  I sure don't like ugly.

I would really love to have the link to this, if you don't mind. I have lot of trailer trash (no offense to trailer dwellers  :P) that are just waiting to have something worse happen to them.

I'd like a link too, if you've got one! It'd be really cool if growing up badly did something other than give them a red memory and make their elder stage shorter (which is almost a GOOD thing sometimes with this game).

It would be a whole lot easier to give you a link if I could remember where I read the blamed thing :) I know I must have got there from one of the stories I've been reading lately so either from here, from SimPosieum (I dunno if Trubble reads this, but just in case, you write *the best* sims stories - I'm loving reading them and appreciate the link to SimPosieum from RL for that top of the list) or from the Yahoo Classic Legacy group - one of the links to one of the blogs there. Unfortunately I also hit "next blog" in there a few times here and there, so it could be from inside somewhere... and my history has all this stuff about the leper king (got off on a kick) mixed into it, so I can't just history back and find it)

I can see the article...two females in one family, victims of the stuck random roll thing so exactly the same sim, one raised well and the other poorly with this skinny face, and an older male that shared their genetics and two other females... but I just can't find it. Isn't that annoying? <keeps looking> I'll post it when/if it turns up.

I already have one family that's 6 clones of the same sim, but they're all adults. Temptation to make more? Argh! Don't tempt me!

(I might, though. I wonder whether it makes a difference if you start with Maxis archetypal faces or highly customised ones?)

Sagana, if you can't find it I'll probably do some experimenting on my own, as I have a good five days to make use of slacking off on things I should be doing before I HAVE to do anything.  ;D

hey, I found it :) here:

http://home.cogeco.ca/~williamsjl3/index.html

scroll down to the Dec. 11th entry.

I hope other people who would like still do some experiments - I don't think that's definitive, just interesting and persuasive.

This information is entirely bogus. Growing up well or badly has ZERO effect on your sim other than elder lifespan. It will not make them learn slower. It will not make them behave badly. Lilith is a bitch not because she grew up badly, but because her interests are highly polarized and she has fewer nice points, which causes her to favor more mean interactions and have poor conversations with people that don't share her highly polarized interests out of the box.

Ok, I buy entirely that it doesn't change their personality or interests a whit, but will it make their faces thinner/sunken? That, imo, is a rather more interesting question, and the primary discussion in that blog which iirc (and I probably don't) makes only one parenthetical statement regarding the points you're raising.

I find it hard to believe that growing up badly or well would have any thing to do with the hideous apperarance of those sims! I have a variety of sims in my game and all of them range from Average to Pixelated hunks !and occasionally I will get an in game born sim that was born to awesome looking sims that has a little different appearance than I expected based on what the parents look like.
  Case in Point Sim brynne is very Pretty and her sim Hubby is a Pixelated Hunk they have a newborn daughter that looks a bit strange  considering her parents genetics.
    I then remebered  that This baby is the granddaughter of Bella Goth. and while Bella herself is a very pretty sim I havent a clue what Bella's parents look like. the genetics could well be a throw down from Bella's Parents to this newborn.
     I think sim appearance  whether its hideous or awesome is based soley on genetics rather than how a sim does or doesnt fare at Transition.

I suspect it affects how many nightmares they have. Most of my sims never have any nightmares, or moments where they start crying for no reason, except for the one sim that grew up badly in strangeville- the red haired alien of the "single" family.

sim clones would have the same genetics. they're actually the same sim born at different times.

it's possible they weren't clones, just had a strong family resemblance and exactly the same stats <shrug> it wouldn't be that hard to check if someone has a clean neighborhood. have a sim, make a backup, grow sim up well 3 times, restore the backup, grow the same sim up badly 3 times. if he/she looks the same no matter, it doesn't have an affect.

that's an interesting theory, especially since I noticed something last week in my game, and I've been meaning to post about it:

I restored my earliest backup (from Oct '04) because I'm retaking early snapshots - I only got a decent graphic card in Nov'04. So I'm using InSim and other cheats to simply set up the shots I want, and that includes de-aging adults to children and/or toddlers. I noticed that a sim that I de-aged from adult to toddler (and then re-grew into a child) was suddenly a better-looking toddler than before.

Here's comparison pictures (the only difference is that the new one is also using a default replacement skintone, and different hair/eyebrows) - note the distance between her nose and her mouth:

(http://www.strangeplaces.net/sims2/normalville/strict/strict_055.jpg) (http://www.strangeplaces.net/tmp/charlotte_toddler.jpg)

(http://www.strangeplaces.net/sims2/normalville/strict/strict_062.jpg) (http://www.strangeplaces.net/tmp/charlotte_child.jpg)

Granted, they're not the best pictures, but I think there *is* a definite difference.

Is that a mono-brow?  Wow!

The problem is that how would the game know which faces and features are more attractive than others? If someone starts off with a very weak jaw, for example, making it more promiment would probably make them more attractive, not less attractive, unlike someone who started with a strong jaw in the first place. The attractiveness of the sim faces is about the combination of all the separate features, how they happen to match.

In the Mandy and Mindy example, they were probably different genetically to start with, but it's just that toddlers' and children's features are softer and less defined in general, and it's often hard to see the differences until they grow up. And since they clearly had different noses, anyway, I wouldn't call them genetic clones.

Besides, you can age sims in CAS when you're creating them: you get the option to see them at each lifestage bar baby. That would indicate that the aging genetics is already laid out, irrespective of behaviour or personality.

Thats what I was thinking. I tihnk that was just a one off, but damn I don't get how the sims 2 creates such ugly babies all the time  :D

(PS Love you avatar haha!)

I also seem to remember that all the future faces for the child are created at the moment it's born. Also, male versions of the faces are generated for a female child, and vice versa, even though we can't see them, I think for future purposes, to be passed on to their their children of both genders.

It's possible that the algorithm for expressing genetic code strings has been slightly altered in an attempt to produce "less ugly" babies, if one of your screenshots is old. The use or non-use of the faceblend cheat may also affect the final output based on a set of genetic strings. Finally, it's possible that the entire effect is an optical delusion brought about by the varying view angle and the replacement skin.

I doubt all the faces are pre-generated the moment the sim is born. It's more likely that the face is algorithmically generated based on the genetic code strings, which would account for the noticeable lag everytime a sim ages.

That's what I seem to remember reading in the guide (that the faces are generated at the time of birth), but I might remember wrong, and I don't have the guide handy at the moment.

I remember back when I had the first-born effect, there were two boys, identical, looks and personality. One grew up badly nearly every time, the other grew up well all the time. They are both elders now, and they are still identical.

That's interesting.  I made Lilith a pet project when I first got the game...determined to "turn her around".   (Hey, her parents were no help and her prissy sister got on my nerves, no wonder Lillith didn't like her.)

Anyway, she's one of my favorite Sims.  What's interesting is, even tho I had no clue what I was doing when I got the game, one of the first things I did was have her go out and buy a whole bunch of magazines.  Only Sim I ever did that for...I must have noticed that her interests were polarized.  (Given that I usually pay no attention to interests, there must have been some reason.)

She's happy, healthy, successful (all-star), and has many friends despite growing up badlly at one point.  She'll occasionally get into a little squabble if she's autonomous. but nothing serious.

So, if one wanted to make a particularly disagreeable Sim, polarizing their interests would be one ingredient.  (Seems obvious, doh, I just hadn't thought of it in that direction before.)  I'm afraid, after rescuing Lillith, I'm brewing a disagreeable Sim right now.  She's a recreation of a TS1 child I had who just didn't get along with anyone and I want to get as close to my TS1 plot line as I can.   (Although I cannot bear to have anyone grow up badly...I just want her to be a bitch who grows up well, and content that she is a bitch!)

 

 

IF you want your sims to be nearly incapable of getting along with ANYONE, you could wipe out their interests entirely so they don't want to talk about ANYTHING. That'll make a really unsociable sim right there. Also, grouchy, nasty sims tend to open up on random people with negative interactions, which can certainly sour the mood right there, but once you get past that initial phase, grouchies get along as well as anyone. Too bad there aren't enough grouchy-type-interactions, like, say, kicking people. Or arguing a lot.

Creating an evil twin skippy? <giggle>


They do roll more wants for things that you actually fulfill, yes? So if they roll wants to prank and you fill those, they'd be more likely to roll more and thus a tad bit grouchier seeming?


Yep. Or vandalism... spray-painting walls, throwing rocks at passing cars, stealing candy from babies, kicking sand in people's faces... definately need more.

OK, I have the guide in hand now and this is what it says:

Every sim actually has 12 faces: one for each age for both genders. They only, however,  show the six faces of their gender as they grow up, though the hidden six faces of the opposite gender are written into the Sim's genes. When a Sim is born, therefore, the six faces for their lifetime are simultaneously created along with six other faces she can pass on genetically.

Well. That makes sense.

but isn't near as much fun.

But since when were sensible things fun?

It would be odd if growing up badly gave them a longer jaw or similar. While it's realistic that the environment can change the way you look, it's more about physical trauma than getting a D at school that would cause it in real life  :D (Incidentally, my husband is an identical twin but has a different jaw from his brother due to getting squished in the uterus.)

This is the sims we're discussing - where toddlers can't be mistreated unless you count never being allowed out of the house and having nannies pee on them ;)


I kinda think of growing up badly as the closest the sims gets to neglect... not having your needs met, that kind of thing. Not quite starving, but maybe not well-fed, no attention. In that case, a thin, pinched-looking face would make sense. (and the game wouldn't know if it was attractive or not - my skinny, funny-faced kid is actually my favorite. No clones for testing tho. I'm using JMs random rolls - thanks JM! I hate clones :)

So too bad if it doesn't have any affect. More variables is almost always better. I still think it'd be worth a full-fledged test, but I'm too lazy to do it ;) It doesn't matter much though as role-play is a wonderful thing.

That, unfortunately, says basically nothing. We already knew that facial genetics are written into the sim for all genders. The question is, are the faces actually generated and cached in advance, or are they procedurally generated based on aforementioned DNA strings. The bulk of the evidence seems to point towards the latter, which makes the "guide" slightly misleading? And is this the Prima Guide? That shit's some expensive terlet paper.

My interpretation is that the faces are all created at the time of birth, or otherwise you wouldn't say "all sims have 12 faces". Only elders would have 12 faces if they are only created along the way. And I interpret the last quoted sentence, the faces being "simultaneously created", to mean that, that they are generated at that moment. But, whatever, I'm not going to fight this point any further since I have already provided the evidence I have.

I wish Maxoid Tom were still around to answer questions like these.



Edited to add: No, actually I'm back with more evidence: When you open up a character package of a sim in SimPE, you can see in the Geometric Data Container that all the facial shapes have been generated for the sims regardless of their age. A toddler has all the faces up until an elder. However, I only see faces for one gender. Unfortunately, I just found out one of my favorite toddlers is going to grow up into a butt-ugly adult  :D.

So, at least all the toddlers have their future faces created for them. Can't say anything about babies since I don't have any in my game at the moment.

Actually it doesn't make any sense at all that the faces are created beforehand. If the "6 others" that she "can pass on" were created at her birth, she would only be able to have a child with one face... well 2, one for each gender and I guess her mate would have 2 so if you had more than 2 boys (for example) they'd *have* to be clones... but they don't - the genetics can combine in a variety of ways. My current couple has 4 boys and they're all different - from toddler up (all the babies look the same to me). So - what I'm poorly saying is that all 12 faces wouldn't reasonably be created at birth. Maybe all her personal "looks" would be generated at birth but surely those of her children wouldn't be?

I guess, in that case, it means that the facial features she will pass on to the future generations have been generated for both female and male children, but the features will still mix with the other parents' ones. But, yes, the personal faces are created before hand exactly as they will be.

Interesting. That doesn't strike me as the way, if I were able to code such things, that I would choose to do it. Generating information before it's needed both increases the load on the machine (unnecessarily in the midst of the tons of other things that have to be done at birth and/or toddlerhood) and locks you in. So that later when you want, for example, to add a plastic surgery machine the machine has to (unnecessarily) regenerate all information from that point forward, unless you want your sim to revert to a big-nosed freak on their next birthday.

Do the changes from the plastic surgery machine pass on genetically?

It doesn't btw totally eliminate the possibility of later modifications (as shown by the machine) for bad growing up or whatever else, but does mean it'd be such a PITA to do it's rather unlikely. Still seems rather redundant to me, but then again this IS the sims we're talking about. It's not really known for what my geek friend calls sexy code (i.e., well-put-together, streamlined, does the job with the least trouble) anyway, is it?

No, changes made with the plastic surgery career reward do not pass on genetically, as far as I know

I would assume that they are following something like the "scientific" definition of beauty, which would lead to the sims' appearance approaching a more standardized face. I also think the prima guide is useless.

I imagine the sims facial data is generated at birth/creation, and that the game codes for the kinds of changes that take place at each age transition. I think the 6 faces thing could mean that the faces are pre-determined, in that the genetic information for the sim is already set- not that they are already generated.

Did you miss my earlier post where I mentioned how the mesh for each 6 faces can be found in a sim's character file, regardless of their age? That pretty much means without a doubt that they are already generated.

Well, I think I might as well test this, as I sprained my goddamned ankle this evening so I can't go anywhere or do much of anything. *mutter*

Anyhow, I'll go one of two ways - make a family of 7 identical toddlers and a placeholder adult, assuring the identicalness of the toddlers by using a sim out of the Sim Bin for each one, or make one adult and use the Tombstone of L&D to self-pollinate, then the triplets and quads hack to ensure quads, and repeat. The first way is less effort, but the second way would allow me to get more, ahem, test subjects. Anyhow, the cheats built into the game will ensure that the social worker won't make any visits, and Merola's multipainting will make aging and aspiration manipulation dead easy.

I'll take a bundle of screenshots and stick them up somewhere when I'm done.

Oh, I'm sorry about your ankle. I hope it heals quickly. I'm looking forward to seeing the tests though :) Should be interesting.

I hope it heals quickly, too, because being laid-up on the couch and having to make a big production every time I want to go to the toilet really shits me.  >:(

Anyhow, the results are here: TS2 Aging Experiment (http://renatus.keffy.com/experiment/ts2aging.html). It isn't pretty, but it took me three hours so it's what y'all get. ;) Be aware that I'm going to take it down if my host says I'm using too much bandwith, so don't expect it to be there forever.

If you don't want to click, the results were - under my test conditions of an adult sim and 7 toddler clones, it didn't matter how they grew up in any stage, they all looked the same through all ages, even as elder.

Thank you for the thorough and scientific approach! And of course I'm happy about the results since they agree with what I originally thought  :D. All I can say is, poor single mom with the seven toddlers!

You're welcome. :) I did my best to use a proper scientific method that wouldn't leave big gaps in the research (and think I did pretty well, considering I haven't really had to use the scientific method in quite a few years). I'm disappointed that they don't end up looking different, but not surprised.

I exited without saving when I was done so I can use them for a challenge - then it will DEFINITELY be 'poor single mom'!  :D

Wonderful!

Your test is certainly conclusive enough for me, especially as it's as expected at that point (I did understand the faces were all there in simPE :) and although I think it's a shame (more fun the other way) am very glad for a pretty much definitive answer. I'll probably still waste my time growing them up well (and reading to them) but at least I'll know I'm doing it because I'm just that way :)

I'm glad you'll get some more use from them (that sounds like a fun challenge) and hope they distracted a bit from the couch and accompanying production ;)

ignorantbliss: right, but obviously it didn't make sense to me. I didn't mean to offend. But I stand by my belief that the prima guide is a useless piece of flaming something- i figured the data could be read/interpreted different ways

anyway, now we know. I think it must have been the camera angles or something that changed between the old version of the game and the new. Perhaps a change to the default facial templates?

As far as I can tell, the default templates didn't change one whit, nor did the blending programming (without cheats turning it off); I still end up with sim kids just as horrifying as before if I'm not careful about who I mate or if I'm not careful with how I put together features when making sims. Again, I think people are seeing identicalness in sims where it didn't actually exist, because the parents either didn't have extreme enough features to lend or the children all got the same extreme features, and the less extreme differences simply do not show up until a child is older. Also, sometimes folks just aren't good at seeing subtle differences in faces. I've noticed a distinct difference in how much difference someone with no art training whatsoever notices compared to someone with a bit of it (and I'm not necessarily talking formal training, just 'looking at people and trying to draw them' training).

Blahblahblah, it's 2 in the morning and I should be in bed. :)