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TS2: Burnination => The Podium => Topic started by: plastic shine on 2006 January 14, 19:30:23



Title: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: plastic shine on 2006 January 14, 19:30:23
I'm playing the Legacy challenge (so I've got no pregnancy hacks in, I'm not supposed to save and exit right before birth to try again for a different gender) and for the last... three? generations, all of the children born have been girls. I generally have 3 - 4 kids per generation, but this last one I think I've had 7? All girls.

Yeah for Legacy it's supposed to be good that you hvae girls, so you dont have to move in and marry anyone. But I can't Try For Baby unless the guy has moved in. So really, it's not much of an advantage. I'm also running out of girls' names.

I don't want to have to reset the family or anything because that would mess up the challenge, but im wondering is there anything that could be done? Maybe for after the challenge, too, if it *will* take some editing/deleting.

I just miss raising boy sims.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: IgnorantBliss on 2006 January 14, 19:34:15
I think you should be able to try for baby when the female is the playable sim and the male is just a visitor.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: BlueSoup on 2006 January 14, 19:45:54
Or, alternatively, you can play another lot (even a player-made CAS male), and invite your Legacy heiress over and try for baby.  You just won't get that NPC bonus.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: IgnorantBliss on 2006 January 14, 19:49:27
I think the female has to be a playable sim that you're playing at the moment before the Try For Baby option comes up. Only Woohoo is possible otherwise.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: BlueSoup on 2006 January 14, 19:50:18
I thought I had played around with this before, but I could be remembering incorrectly.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: plastic shine on 2006 January 14, 20:18:11
The female is always the playable sim, as I only ever have females in the household these days.

I'd much rather figure out this birth imbalance though  :-\


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Oddysey on 2006 January 14, 20:23:30
Exactly how many births have you had in this family, and how many of them have been female?


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: plastic shine on 2006 January 14, 20:39:09
Births: 21

Girls - 17
Boys - 4


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Oddysey on 2006 January 14, 20:56:26
Sounds like the birth imbalance is just the result of a random fluke. A "truly random" sequence of 1s and 0s (or boys and girls, or heads and tails) will have long stretches of just one or the other. This is normal, and it should even out after a while.

In the meantime, you have two options. One is to bend the rules of the challenge a little, and use the save and reload trick to get the gender you want. The other is to bend the rules in a different, and not technically against the rules way, and edit the gender of babies using SimPE. I think there's instructions on how to do that in the "tired of blue nurseries" thread. Or whatever its called.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Sleepycat on 2006 January 14, 20:56:54
But I can't Try For Baby unless the guy has moved in.

why not? is it against the rules? because the option should be there since it is the females home...


I'm also running out of girls' names.

http://www.behindthename.com/
http://www.yourbabysname.com/
http://www.20000-names.com/
http://www.babynames.com/
http://www.babyzone.com/babynames/

 ;D


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Swiftgold on 2006 January 14, 21:24:33
Yeah, the female definitely has to be the playable character. Though I've gotten around this (to make it even) and used the mind-control mirror to have the female visitor selectable while woohooing, so that there's an equal chance... I have risky woohoo going but I don't know if it still applies when the female is the visitor.

But as for the original topic... lots of people seem to have these runs of one sex or the other, apparently because the Maxis randomizer doesn't randomize completely randomly. Mine's done that several times, though not quite to that extent. The SimPeing sex-change seems to work quite nicely, though.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: plastic shine on 2006 January 14, 21:50:40
ITS A BOY!!!!!!!!!!!

Haha it was a girl at first, but I quit and reloaded it and got a boy. I've long given up on playing strictly to the Legacy rules, and I'm so glad I finally gave up on the baby thing and got a boy this time. Eee. ^___^


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Jorenne on 2006 January 15, 00:07:06
You want gender imbalance?

This one family I was playing I particularly wanted a boy (or even several of them)  instead I get 72 girls.  In a row.

in fact, the same couple, out of 100 births, had a grand total of 9 boys.

Now that's imbalance.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Ellatrue on 2006 January 15, 01:04:38
How does something like that happen? and 72 kids?

You know, I recently read something in Scientific American about gender imbalance in a community causing an increase in criminal activity... maybe you should have more of your sims getting into "life of crime" career paths


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Jorenne on 2006 January 15, 02:33:59
I was specifically trying to recreate a sim born to two parents, so all I was doing was Try for baby, speed up pregnancy, give birth.  Lather, rinse repeat.  Hence the 72 children lol.  And this was in a brand new never been played pleasantview with the one couple made in CAS.  So there shouldn't have been an overkill of one gender or the other.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: ElviraGoth on 2006 January 15, 13:12:43
I don't know the rules of the Legacy challenge, but is it permissable to use the Lot Debugger?  I use the rerandomizer on it when I'm playing a household where a birth is imminent (save before using!) and it seems to help.  Otherwise, I seem to get a lot more girls than boys as well.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: J. M. Pescado on 2006 January 15, 13:22:28
I don't know the rules of the Legacy challenge, but is it permissable to use the Lot Debugger?
I think you're permitted to use things to fix bugs. The Debugger is meant for fixing bugs, including the bug in the random-sim-generator.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Sagana on 2006 January 15, 14:08:20
And all I've had are boys. (not that I've tried 72 times or anything ridiculous like that). And I do use the lot debugger (the Legacy rules might not like it but I don't like clones so something had to give) although I won't reload if the babies a boy. I wrote the "search for a baby girl" into my storyline instead. Kinda fun... will see how long it take to get a girl and now I'm kinda hoping it's not too quick :) (so the next birth will undoubtedly be female).


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: jrd on 2006 January 15, 15:04:55
In a new neighbourhood the first kids will always be girls. Ts2 tries to get an equal male/female spread in each neighbourhood, and as there are more male-only NPCs you'll start with a shortage in females.

Add a dummy family of females, or generate some female townies to rebalance the hood.

OR you could just be unlucky and suffer from the sado-randomness.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Issy on 2006 January 15, 15:22:26
Girls are plentiful in my neighbourhood too.  Since my new install I've had like 15 girls and 2 boys.  I don't like reloading for gender, but I guess I will need to soon. 

In a new neighbourhood the first kids will always be girls. Ts2 tries to get an equal male/female spread in each neighbourhood, and as there are more male-only NPCs you'll start with a shortage in females.

Add a dummy family of females, or generate some female townies to rebalance the hood.

You could be right.  This is my third install since getting the original and I've always started fresh.  I always get alot more girls than boys.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: J. M. Pescado on 2006 January 15, 15:38:04
In a new neighbourhood the first kids will always be girls. Ts2 tries to get an equal male/female spread in each neighbourhood, and as there are more male-only NPCs you'll start with a shortage in females.

Add a dummy family of females, or generate some female townies to rebalance the hood.

OR you could just be unlucky and suffer from the sado-randomness.
If there really is some kind of forced loading mechanism, then the game will always be biased towards girls, because anything you do is going to promote an excess of girls: Marrying your surplus girls to the male NPCs only exacerbates the problem, since it will simply cause those NPCs to respawn. Making more boys will exacerbate the problem. Making more girls causes, surprise surprise, MORE GIRLS.

Which essentially means that if this is true, there's no way around the problem, and the game is simply biased towards more girls.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Ellatrue on 2006 January 15, 16:06:34
/goes on a shooting spree


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Torkle on 2006 January 15, 16:11:03
I've thought about the baby gender problem for a while, and I've come up with two different ideas, both of which are unappealing.

1. Brandi Broke Effect : If there is only one parent linked to a pregnancy, the baby will be the opposite gender.  This kinda sucks because then the resulting baby genetics are one sided.

2. Twins Effect: Make every birth a twins birth and discard the unwanted gender.  Rather draconian and leads to BFBVFS.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: plastic shine on 2006 January 15, 16:22:01
Hmm. So hack-wise, a good one to install would be LotDebugger? (link to that, please?)

And all this talk about creating townies... I didn't even know you could?  ???  I thought the only ones you got were the ones Maxis made.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: twojeffs on 2006 January 15, 16:25:42
In a new neighbourhood the first kids will always be girls. Ts2 tries to get an equal male/female spread in each neighbourhood, and as there are more male-only NPCs you'll start with a shortage in females.

Add a dummy family of females, or generate some female townies to rebalance the hood.

OR you could just be unlucky and suffer from the sado-randomness.

In my new Pleasantview since my hard drive crash I've had a total of 9 babies born in game...all boys. I'm inclined to blame it on the sado-random number generator, which we all know sucks hard in the game.

@plastic shine - lot debugger: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=72.0. To create townies, zap sims into the townie pool using Inge's teleporter shrub (simlogical.com).


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: IgnorantBliss on 2006 January 15, 16:29:27
I've thought about the baby gender problem for a while, and I've come up with two different ideas, both of which are unappealing.

1. Brandi Broke Effect : If there is only one parent linked to a pregnancy, the baby will be the opposite gender.  This kinda sucks because then the resulting baby genetics are one sided.

2. Twins Effect: Make every birth a twins birth and discard the unwanted gender.  Rather draconian and leads to BFBVFS.

Remember you can always just save right before birth and reload until you get the wanted gender.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Torkle on 2006 January 15, 16:44:24
Remember you can always just save right before birth and reload until you get the wanted gender.

Yep - But as a hacker, I'm looking for an in-game BHAV modification based change.  Wouldn't it be nice to have a hack that lets you choose the gender of your new baby as it is born?


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: plastic shine on 2006 January 15, 16:45:03
Question about making sims townies-
After they become a townie, do they still hold the family ties and stuff to their family? And does their name, personality, skills, etc all stay the same, or do they get changed randomly so they're a random townie and not someone you created?


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Renatus on 2006 January 15, 16:51:50
I believe our dear modders here have said a few times that a hack for determining gender of the baby at birth is not possible.

plastic shine: Are you talking about making a sim a townie with the Simlogical teleporter shrub? If so, they retain all of their traits and family ties as you created them, with one exception: Fresh out of CAS sims made into townies will be randomly assigned a job and the appropriate skill points. I don't know what happens to sims who are already employed/already have skill points, but the same may happen. YA sims will be dormies if put into the townie pool.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: plastic shine on 2006 January 15, 17:00:32
How about names? If I make 8 people in CAS all as roommates (to avoid doing it a million times over) when they become townies with the shrub would they keep their first and last names?


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: maxon on 2006 January 15, 17:05:59
I've thought about the baby gender problem for a while, and I've come up with two different ideas, both of which are unappealing.

2. Twins Effect: Make every birth a twins birth and discard the unwanted gender.  Rather draconian and leads to BFBVFS.

Does this assume that all twins births are fraternal twins of different genders?  I have only ever had one set of brother and sister twins.  I've not had many twins (I don't use a hack) but of the six I have had (and can remember) all except that one were boy-boy or girl-girl.  Three of these pairs were identical.  I know they aren't identical in game terms but I have to dress them differently to tell them apart.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Torkle on 2006 January 15, 17:30:41
Does this assume that all twins births are fraternal twins of different genders?  I have only ever had one set of brother and sister twins.  I've not had many twins (I don't use a hack) but of the six I have had (and can remember) all except that one were boy-boy or girl-girl.  Three of these pairs were identical.  I know they aren't identical in game terms but I have to dress them differently to tell them apart.

Ahah - Bad assumption on my part.  All of my twins (maybe six now) have been boy-girl.  Rules out one more idea for baby gender choosing.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: twojeffs on 2006 January 15, 17:33:01
Remember you can always just save right before birth and reload until you get the wanted gender.

Yep - But as a hacker, I'm looking for an in-game BHAV modification based change.  Wouldn't it be nice to have a hack that lets you choose the gender of your new baby as it is born?

Not possible currently without hacking the make new character primitive in the .exe, which sucks. Maxoid Tom has said that he was going to try to get the primitive changed to accept the gender parameter for babies in one of the EPs, but who knows when or if it will happen. I try with every new EP and still no joy.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Renatus on 2006 January 15, 17:35:44
How about names? If I make 8 people in CAS all as roommates (to avoid doing it a million times over) when they become townies with the shrub would they keep their first and last names?

Yes, they keep all traits, including names. This becomes annoying when one ends up with a bunch of different people with the same last name... I edit them in SimPE. I don't know WHY they didn't add the same sort of household interface to the CAS system in the regular neighborhood as they did in the Uni neighborhoods once the EP came out...


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Torkle on 2006 January 15, 18:08:01
Not possible currently without hacking the make new character primitive in the .exe, which sucks. Maxoid Tom has said that he was going to try to get the primitive changed to accept the gender parameter for babies in one of the EPs, but who knows when or if it will happen. I try with every new EP and still no joy.

Yes, a change to the primitive 'Make New Character' so that it uses a gender parameter is the best solution, but I'm trying to think outside of the box here.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: twojeffs on 2006 January 15, 18:46:46
Been there, done that.  :D Gender selection has been a 'holy grail' type quest for me for over a year. I've tried so many different things I've lost count.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: FreakyRufus on 2006 January 15, 18:54:43
Would it be possible to let them be born normally, and then change the gender afterwards? (Thinking outside the box and outside the room the box is in :))


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: BlueSoup on 2006 January 15, 18:57:42
Would it be possible to let them be born normally, and then change the gender afterwards? (Thinking outside the box and outside the room the box is in :))

You can do that now, with SimPE.


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: Karen on 2006 January 15, 19:02:34
Would it be possible to let them be born normally, and then change the gender afterwards? (Thinking outside the box and outside the room the box is in :))

Yes.  There was a discussion about this last week (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=2581.msg74220#msg74220) - look at post # 28.

It's fairly easy to do and it works fine.

Karen


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: FreakyRufus on 2006 January 15, 19:37:32
Would it be possible to let them be born normally, and then change the gender afterwards? (Thinking outside the box and outside the room the box is in :))

You can do that now, with SimPE.

Sorry, I should have been a little more detailed in what I wrote.  What I'm suggesting is a mod that would, for example, pop up a dialog immediately after the baby is born to let you change the gender, in game, without having to save/quite/edit/restart.  Would that be possible?

Or, to take it a step further, don't even use the default routines for birth -- completely replace them.  Call Make New Character, then take the created character and change the gender, then play the animation, assign a name, etc.  Would that be feasible?


Title: Re: Major imbalance of boys vs girls being born
Post by: twojeffs on 2006 January 15, 19:42:40
Nope, the required files can't be changed from in-game. Simpe is currently the only way to change the gender.