Identical siblings

[Kyna]

Thanks for that Jorenne.

I know I said I couldn't be bothered testing it, but I have to admit I was starting to get curious and pondering which of my families to test it with ... now I don't need to

[Swiftgold]

After having a bunch of clone siblings early in the game I started using the Lot Debugger, which definitely works... a two-Family-Sim couple of mine have five children who all look different, even if they did all get the father's custom eyes. Four girls and a boy, two got his blonde hair and three got the mother's red hair. The faces are much different on each, which is nice because I have two-children families with the kids exactly alike! I know the personality following the pattern is the big problem with that "firstborn" thing, and I don't know how the looks get so varied by using this, but it works, so, hey. Whatever keeps even more of my Sims from cheating just to get some offspring variety going. *grin*

[ZephyrZodiac]

I think the problem is there are so many ugly faces in CAS that most of us tend to avoid them like the plague and stick to the ones with more regular features, so the parents themselves are not that dissimilar. 

[Swiftgold]

I think the problem is there are so many ugly faces in CAS that most of us tend to avoid them like the plague and stick to the ones with more regular features, so the parents themselves are not that dissimilar. 

It's definitely possible... off the top of my head, the only clone siblings I've had are from CAS parents that I made rather slapdash to serve as parents for the Sims I made carefully in Bodyshop to look like videogame characters. Two of those are the Family Sims I mentioned, and they have some rather unique features, so it's not a stretch to say that's why the kids all look different. This is all in second/third generation, though... I haven't gotten far enough to see how further descendants of those CAS Sims turn out.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, for starters, there does seem to be a male and female counterpart of each face type, for instance, when you get the initial sim generate in CAS and it's female, but you want a male so you change to male, the faces are often almost identical.  Therefore it can be quite easy to use the same facial type for both parents without even realising you've done it, just that you go for the one nearest to what you're looking for.  But sometimes, if you take a different type of face (say, for example, the elf face) and play around till you get that near to what you had in mind, then because it started out different, you should get more variation with the kids.  I know I've found that famiies I made using that face who then married sims who didn't had babies that often turned out quite a lot different from either parent.  Like if the elf sim has the pointed ears and the long nose and the other parent has a little nose and little ears, you might get a child who has pointed ears and a little nose.

[Swiftgold]

It's possible I ended up doing that, though I have no idea by now, as these were the first CAS Sims I ever made when the game first came out, and I just tried to vaguely make them look like my Bodyshop Sims without actually matching anything up - so I likely used a lot of the templates to start with. Oh well. The clones have been disposed of mostly or are otherwise not going to pass on their genes, so with the Lot Debugger I should be set. *grin*

[cwhitney]

What I don't get is how a toddler can have a negative relationship with its family members immediately upon transitioning. My sim babies are almost immediately turned into toddlers. I don't get it.

I can't speak to your situation, since you transition them almost immediately, but in my game I get negative interactions and relationship points between babies/toddlers and other family members when said family members wake up a sleeping baby/toddler.  I don't actually see the minus signs above their heads, but I notice an effect in the relationship panel.

[Karen]

I think the problem is there are so many ugly faces in CAS that most of us tend to avoid them like the plague and stick to the ones with more regular features, so the parents themselves are not that dissimilar. 

I agree, but I've also had the situation where very-distantly-related Sims are so identical that I can't tell them apart.  For example, at one point I had two adult females whose great-grandfathers had been brothers, but they had no other relatives in common.  There had not been any CAS Sims in either family for quite a few generations, and yet these two Sims had absolutely identical facial features.

I've also found that it's possible to breed out the ugliness, with enough time and patience.  I had a decent-looking CAS Sim once who got married to a normal-looking game-born Sim and gave birth to three daughters, all of whom were unbelievably ugly.  I decided to let them breed anyway.  In the third generation, the children came out normal-looking, with no trace of the ugly faces left.

Karen

[cwykes]

OK, so y'all got me a little curious.  I had to test and see for sure, and yes, personality is set at birth and doesn't change until parent's start encouraging.

Thanks for the test - and the pic! 

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, in that case I know whose to blame for some incarnations of Keanu Broke having only 1 for neatness!  Brandi must have been "encouraging sloppiness" without me knowing!

[Bangelnuts]

Well, in that case I know whose to blame for some incarnations of Keanu Broke having only 1 for neatness!  Brandi must have been "encouraging sloppiness" without me knowing!

one never knows what our sims are actually saying when we send them of to encourage their children! after all simlish isnt exactly taught in schools .......at least not where I live any way 

[ZephyrZodiac]

I don't often use the "encourage" thing anyway, I always find the parent wanders of and gets involved in something like having a pee when the kid tries to report their progress!   (But I think they do a lot of encouraging in general conversation!)

[cwykes]

I don't think any encouraging is going on without you knowing it.  I've never seen the kid's personality change without encourage. You'd know if it changed because you see a line under the personality they were born with and extra points gained with encourage don't get that line under them.  when they have kids I think it's their original personality that goes into the melting pot not the current personality (nature/nurture?).

Encourage activity is pretty quick and there isn't really time for the adult to wander off.  I also think it's the most useful and get most of my kids up to 10 activity if I can.  That way they can fit more in a day.  You might have to have the adult walk about the floor once or cancel one activity out of their queue.  I did find once that encouraging worked well in the kitchen after dinner when there is still some food on the serving plate. The adult just had time to do "smells nice".   

Encouraging to be neat is just a little slower.  I have the adult sit on a nearby chair and get up again. The others are a pain unless they are the only sims on the lot or the third is standing right next to you wanting to make friends. Never with more sims on the lot.    I keep meaning to turn off free will and try that. 

OK it's a pain not being able to queue the actions up so you have to be concentrating on those sims not something else.  The answer to that is JM's encouragificator.   It doesn't give me a choice of what is being encouraged, cos I have base game only and I had to take it out when I discovered consort capp encouraging juliet to be grouchy!

There's a whole thread here somewhere about efficient personalities - JMs research about the optimum number of points in each....

[ZephyrZodiac]

Sorry, should have made it clear, I was just being facetious.

[nectere]

I will be glad when the encourigficator is on the approved list

[ZephyrZodiac]

Yes, me too, it's having to stand over the parent and stop them doing something else that tees me off!

[cwykes]

me too and until I get uni I'm stuck with it. 

Sorry about " Encouraging 101" ZZ , I spend a lot of time on a board with lots of newbies who don't know so much and I get carried away......  Even with some of the experienced simmers there, we still swap info and find bits we don't know already..

[ZephyrZodiac]

I was just sorry that not making it clear I was joking put you to all that trouble!  But I'm sure it will be of use to someone, we get newbies here too!

[J. M. Pescado]

I will be glad when the encourigficator is on the approved list

The Encouragificator is not a hack. Therefore it has no conflict potential.

However, it is quite likely that this product will be discontinued and merged with the AutoSoc in the near future, to reduce the number of objects in the game.

[cwykes]

ZZ - I copied and saved it as text for another time

[ZephyrZodiac]

Maybe you could post it somewhere like peasantry - start a thread of useful hints and tips?

[cwykes]

maybe - there's plenty of stuff on other sites about relatively basic gameplay.  what I'd really like is to make requests for new items in the war room - Advanced Help pages.   There's really good stuff on some of these podium threads that will get buried... maybe I'll ask in the bit of the board about site management..