Here is my corrected DNA for the Smith family. I've put all the comments at the bottom so you can just cut & paste the lines into the Sim DNA in SimPE. Remember that you have to Commit to every single change you make in SimPE, or they don't stick .

PT#9's new DNA
1 (dtString): 00000004-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
2 (dtString): 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46
268435457: 00000004-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435458: 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46
268435459: 12d4f3e1-fdbe-4fe7-ace3-46dd9ff52b51
268435461:
268435462: 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46
3 (dtString): 12d4f3e1-fdbe-4fe7-ace3-46dd9ff52b51
4 (dtString): -858851246:2142037590:1
5 (dtString): brow,mouth,cheek,cheekbones,eyes,ears,
6 (dtString): 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46

I've made him homozygous for alien skin and alien eyes, as he is a "true" alien. He is also homozygous for red hair - I didn't change this from the way the game had him set up already. As alien skin is dominant over normal skin, this version of PT#9 will always have alien-skinned children. If you want to change this, change the line that starts 268435462: to a different skin tone.

Jenny's new DNA:
1 (dtString): 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
2 (dtString): 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435457: 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435458: 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435459: 51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7
268435461:
268435462: 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
3 (dtString): 51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7
4 (dtString): -858851246:2133502647:0
5 (dtString): brow,cheek,ears,
6 (dtString): 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

She is homozygous for blonde hair and green eyes. I've made her heterozygous for skin colour (light & tan) to reflect her parentage and the fact that 2 of her brothers are tan skinned. However, I've set the "skin colour to pass on" to be light skin. This is fairly irrelevant in her children, as they will inherit an alien skin gene from their homozygous father, and alien skin is dominant over other skin colours - but depending on her children's partners, her grandchildren may revert to light skin.

Johnny's new DNA:
1 (dtString): 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
2 (dtString): 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46
268435457: 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435458: 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435459: 51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7
268435461:
268435462: 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
3 (dtString): 51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7
4 (dtString): -858851246:2141648567:1
5 (dtString): brow,mouth,eyes,ears,
6 (dtString): 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46

He is homozygous for blonde hair and green eyes. I've made him heterozygous for skin colour to reflect his parentage. He may pass on alien or light skin.

Jill's new DNA:
1 (dtString): 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
2 (dtString): 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435457: 00000004-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435458: 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435459: 51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7
268435461:
268435462: 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
3 (dtString): 51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7
4 (dtString): -858851246:2133599162:1 = ??!
5 (dtString): nose,brow,cheek,cheekbones,eyes,ears,
6 (dtString): 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

She is homozygous for skin colour, which is weird - she "should" have one alien skin gene. I've left her as she is, though. She is homozygous for green eyes and now heterozygous for hair colour (expressed = blonde, recessive = red) to reflect her parentage.

Just to prove this works, here is the DNA of Jake Smith, the new third child of PT#9 & Jenny. Note that Jake's DNA is in the new order introduced by University. Each line still codes for the same thing (so the line that begins 1 (dtString): still codes for Expressed hair colour), but the order of lines is different - just to be difficult .

Jake's DNA:
6 (dtString): 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46
268435462: 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
2 (dtString): 6baf064a-85ad-4e37-8d81-a987e9f8da46
268435458: 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
1 (dtString): 00000004-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
268435457: 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
3 (dtString): 12d4f3e1-fdbe-4fe7-ace3-46dd9ff52b51
268435459: 51c4a750-c9f4-4cfe-801c-898efc360cb7
5 (dtString): mouth,cheekbones,eyes,ears,
268435461:

Jake is heterozygous for skin colour and could potentially pass on either alien or light skin. His expressed hair colour is red, but he also has a blonde hair gene. He has alien eyes but a recessive green eye gene. This is what the game generated for me, based on my modified DNA for PT#9 and Jenny.

OK, this will be step-by-step. I hope.

1. Run SimPE by double-clicking on its icon.
2. The menu at the top of the screen says File, Tools, Extra, Window, Help. Choose Tools --> Neighbourhood --> Neighbourhood Browser.
3. Click on the icon of the Neighbourhood you want to edit - in this case, Strangetown.
4. If you don't already take regular backups, choose Create Backup from the options at the bottom of the Neighbourhood Browser. Making a backup takes a few minutes. Don't be alarmed if your SimPE window goes completely blank for a while.
... waiting for mine to finish.

5. OK. The Neighbourhood Browser will still be open. Select Strangetown again, & this time choose Open. Eventually, the Neighbourhood will load.
6. Now, go to the menu at the top again. Select Tools --> Neighbourhood --> Sim Browser
7. Scroll down the list of sims until you find the one you want (e.g. Pollination Tech #9). Double-click to load him.
8. You then get a Sim Description Editor appear in the window at the bottom of the screen. There are 10 icons to choose from. Pick the last one, More --> Open Sim DNA.
9. The DNA editor appears in the window.

To change the contents of a line:
1. Click to highlight it
2. Go to the Value box on the right
3. Click inside the Value box a couple of times until the whole line is highlighted, then hit backspace or delete on your keyboard to remove it.
4. Go to my corrected DNA file. Highlight the new Value, and press CTRL-C to copy it to the Windows clipboard.
5. Back in SimPE, press CTRL-V in the Value box. The new value will paste in.
6. Click Commit at the top to commit the changes.

To delete the contents of a line:
1. Click to highlight it
2. Click "delete" at the bottom.

To add a new line:
1. Click "add" at the bottom. It will add a new line at the end of the DNA.
This becomes quite a pain in the bottom, because there doesn't seem to be any easy way to reorder the lines. The only way I've managed to do it is by cutting and pasting a lot to get the lines into the right order. But you can make it quicker because whatever line is highlighted when you hit "add", that line will be duplicated at the bottom.

When you have finished editing your DNA, go back to the main menu at the top of the screen. Go to File --> Save. And it should save the changes.

I hope that helps. If you need more assistance ask around here until you find someone who's better at explaining than me, or who has the time to make lots of screenshots .

Can anyone tell us if indeed these DNA problems where fix with the Nightlife patch or Nightlife itself?

baratron, thank you. As with Motoki's tutorial, I have saved yours into a document on my hard drive. I hope this is OK with you. I think this is really clear useful info and I'm sort of collecting for my own reference.

I appreciate the time and effort you put in to posting this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah - link to it, save it on your hard drive, do whatever you like with it as long as you give me & the others who worked on it credit. Pointless posting it on a public forum and then saying "no, no, it's all mine, you can't use it" .


Not if Sims genetics work the same way as real life, as both light blue and green are recessive, and for a recessive trait to be shown, you need 2 identical copies of the gene. Having said that, Sim genetics clearly don't work as real life, because real life genes only come in two possible forms, not 4 or 5. To get more than 2 eye colours in real life, there's actually 4 or 5 genes all working together.

So, er, I don't know what colour eyes a sim with one light blue & one green gene would have. Probably if one of us could wade through the horrendously long Mysteries of Sim DNA Revealed thread over at MTS2, MaxoidTom might have said something there. But I can't really be bothered .

You're almost right. It's not guaranteed that the human skintones will overtake in the third generation, but it's happened this time because of Alexander's boring homozygous DNA.

As far as I know, it's random which of the lines of DNA gets chosen to be passed on to the offspring. One line of DNA comes from each parent for each of the characteristics. However, for some reason in this particular case, the game decided that the child was going to have skintone 2. Because the child has a human skintone, it theoretically cannot have alien eyes. We know this doesn't always work because there have been some scary-looking sims born who had alien eyes in human skintones, or had alien-sized eyes with human-coloured pupils. But in theory, it shouldn't happen.

Now, as for why Alexander's other traits dominate, it's because he's homozygous dominant for eye colour and hair colour. If he had a recessive light blue eye gene, or a recessive red hair gene, you'd d have a lot more mixing in the children. So if you had instead had Alien girl (alien/lightest skintone, alien/light blue eyes, dark/red hair) + A boy (lightest/second lightest skintone, brown/light blue eyes, dark/red hair), you might well get a child who had red hair or light blue eyes. But because he has brown eyes and black hair which dominate over other colours, those characteristics are expressed in the offspring.

The offspring may well have a recessive light blue eye or red hair gene, though. And if paired up with another heterozygous sim, the fourth generation of kids could have the red hair or light blue eyes from their great-grandfather.


Er, maybe. I don't ever play Veronaville, because the premade story doesn't appeal to me. But I could probably poke around in SimPE one evening. Can't promise anything because I'm ill and I have several sim projects on the go already (getting anything done is subject to not being stoned out of my brain on strong painkillers).

I can certainly make a list of which sims are problematic, but working out what the DNA "should" be takes a fair bit longer .

I don't really known if it's possible to have a sim with human skin and alien eyes without resorting to using custom content to do it. The alien eyes seem to be exclusively tied to the skintone and you can't select them in the CAS in debug mode unless you've also selected the alien skintone. And then if you change the alien skintone back to human, the eyes changed too.

However, I have extracted the texture for the Maxis alien eyes and made 'contact lenses' out of them so you could always do that.

they weren't, as I just followed this now and I have both NL and the patch.

Thanks baratron, this is really helpful, but does anyone know where I could get a list of all the information for sim DNA? I would like to change a couple of my old CAS sims, but dont want to mess about without enough information about it.

fiona

just curious...do all the dna 'strands' follow the same pattern? 8-4-4-4-12?

Hmm! Y'know, I've never even thought about how custom hair, eyes & skintones are coded. Probably because until a few weeks ago, I didn't have any sims that were using them.

OK, let me open up SimPE & look at my Sean sim - a guy who has custom everything. And of course, he was created post-Uni, so he has his DNA in the new order - gah. But at least he was made in Bodyshop, so he's homozygous for everything .

SimSean's DNA:
6 (dtString): b039c364-4ccb-089e-7dcf-f18d82a769b4 = Skintone to be passed on line 1 (Custom from SimCribbling)
268435462: b039c364-4ccb-089e-7dcf-f18d82a769b4 = Skintone to be passed on line 2
2 (dtString): b039c364-4ccb-089e-7dcf-f18d82a769b4 = Expressed skintone
268435458: b039c364-4ccb-089e-7dcf-f18d82a769b4 = Recessive skintone
1 (dtString): 43289ad5-4a5f-4b2d-804c-38841a4f03f2 = Expressed hair colour (Crammyboy's Messy Hair - blond)
268435457: 43289ad5-4a5f-4b2d-804c-38841a4f03f2 = Recessive hair colour
3 (dtString): 3e3dd36a-42f7-3993-abec-d186355ae5f0 = Expressed eye colour (Custom from Helaene)
268435459:  3e3dd36a-42f7-3993-abec-d186355ae5f0 = Recessive eye colour
5 (dtString): brow,cheek,cheekbones,
268435461:

As you can see, the only way to be certain how the custom content matches up is to use a first generation sim from Create-A-Sim or Bodyshop - because you need the identical lines of DNA. I have no idea whether the same skintone or eyes in someone else's game would have the same number assigned to it - I'm thinking probably not. Unfortunately, the Short Messy Hair from Crammyboy is the only custom content that I'm sure of the name of - I didn't make the sim to know which actual skintone from SimCribbling or eye colour from Helaene was used.

Let's compare him to SimKasson, another sim with custom eyes & skintone but Maxis default hair.

SimKasson's DNA:
6 (dtString): b039c364-4ccb-089e-7dcf-f18d82a769b4 = Skintone to be passed on line 1 (Custom from SimCribbling)
268435462: b039c364-4ccb-089e-7dcf-f18d82a769b4 = Skintone to be passed on line 2
2 (dtString): b039c364-4ccb-089e-7dcf-f18d82a769b4 = Expressed skintone
268435458: b039c364-4ccb-089e-7dcf-f18d82a769b4 = Recessive skintone
1 (dtString): 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Expressed hair colour (Maxis brown)
268435457: 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Recessive hair colour
3 (dtString): 46474682-4ab9-9837-c2e0-b9901dc182b5 = Expressed eye colour (Clear blue eyes by Echo66)
268435459:  46474682-4ab9-9837-c2e0-b9901dc182b5 = Recessive eye colour
5 (dtString): nose,mouth,eyes,ears,
268435461:

He uses the same skintone as SimSean, so he gets the same numbers in his DNA. This is hardly a surprise, but it was probably worth checking!

OK. SimLiz. Again, custom eyes & skintone but Maxis default hair:

SimLiz's DNA:
6 (dtString): ba6256f3-4790-1e3e-2013-16a4c66fc1cb = Skintone to be passed on line 1 (Custom from SimCribbling)
268435462: ba6256f3-4790-1e3e-2013-16a4c66fc1cb = Skintone to be passed on line 2
2 (dtString): ba6256f3-4790-1e3e-2013-16a4c66fc1cb = Expressed skintone
268435458: ba6256f3-4790-1e3e-2013-16a4c66fc1cb = Recessive skintone
1 (dtString): 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Expressed hair colour (Maxis black)
268435457: 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 = Recessive hair colour
3 (dtString): b5b12e70-4cd7-5ebe-c3d9-7c9677ac19da = Expressed eye colour (Custom by Helaene)
268435459:  b5b12e70-4cd7-5ebe-c3d9-7c9677ac19da = Recessive eye colour
5 (dtString): nose,brow,cheek,jaw,
268435461:

SimLiz uses a different skintone from the boys, but it's also made by SimCribbling. Sadly, it can be seen that there is no relationship between custom content made by the same creator. If you can spot a similarity between ba6256f3-4790-1e3e-2013-16a4c66fc1cb and b039c364-4ccb-089e-7dcf-f18d82a769b4, you're better at maths than me. Likewise, 3e3dd36a-42f7-3993-abec-d186355ae5f0 and b5b12e70-4cd7-5ebe-c3d9-7c9677ac19da for the two eye colours by Helaene? Nah .

But at least if you start with first generation sims, you'll be able to find out the relevant code numbers for each of your bits of custom content, and that'll be useful for... something .

thanks, someone might want to double check the light blue eyes then...it's 9-4-4-4-12...any of the standard sims have light blue eyes? none of my created sims do, they tend to have custom eyes...

and no...I didn't sit here and count every single 'strand'