Changing Dominant/Recessive Values on Skin and Eyes

[Syera]

Finally discovering how to bin hair colors properly has lead me to ponder upon a few related possibilities...

I remember that quite some time ago, some talented fellow on MTS2 was making his albino skins read as lighter than the Maxis pale skins by changing its skintone number.

Now, would it be possible to take a custom skin and by changing it to, oh, 00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 have it come out with the same chances of being passed on as the in-game skin of the same number without causing some kind of conflict?

(And on this tack, what exactly are the skintone values for each in-game skintone? Anyone know?)

Now, I was just looking on one of my custom eyes to see if there was any changable number that could affect dominance, but I've yet to find it. Any help on this one?

EDIT: Most of the juicy goodness of this topic (plus a few nuts for added flavor) has been condensed into one fun-sized text document.

[Renatus]

I KNOW I did something to my custom eyes to make them not-always-dominant... let's see if I can figure out what by looking at them again.

Okay, it looks like that when you open up an eye in SimPE and look at the Texture Overlay XML it has a line called genetic, which is a single number. For custom stuff it seems like it is 0, which is always dominant over everything else - I think the regular dominance numbers run 1-4, 1 being most dominant and 4 being least. I'm pretty sure that if this is changed on custom eyes it makes them properly genetic. I'm pretty sure this works; I have one sim that has custom purple eyes that I set the genetic to be 4 on that has children with a sim with what looks like default dark blue eyes. Both children have dark blue eyes, but I looked at their genetics just now and they both have the purple as recessive.

I don't know if skintones can be made genetic in the same way, I heard there was some difficulty with it but haven't tried it myself yet.

[angelyne]

Renatus is correct, I've changed all my eyes in that way as well, to make them behave genetically correctly.

I also changed the genetic value of my correctely binned custom hair and that seems to work as well.  I made black and brown 1 (dominant) and red and blond 2 ( recessive).  Then I made some tests in CAS generating babies from various parents and it looked like it worked.  Black or brown always dominated over red and blond but if you mixed red and blond it seemed random.  Same for Black and Brown.

I would love to find out how to do it for skins as well.

BTW Renatus, can you point me towards some material that explains how to interpret the DNA of a sims?  I need to undestand that better.

Yesterday was I looking at a sims date and saw a field called skin color in AGE DATA.  It was numbered 1 to 4 and that seemed to correspond to pale thru dark (something like 0000-000-000-0001, I am not at home, so I can't check).  I was wondering what would happened if I change that value.  Would it change the skin?  I was trying to figure out way to change the default skin my sims is using without resorting ot Sims Surgery.

[Syera]

What value, then, would you recommend giving a blue eye color?  I just tried changing an aquamarine color to 4, but found that it was so hyper-recessive that the game favored even gray over it!

[aqualectrix]

Genetic-izing skintones is easy.  You just change the genetic field in the Skintone XML.

Maxis skins, from lightest to darkest, are .10, .30, .60, and .90.  Every non-bizarre (i.e. alien) skin I download gets slotted into this continuum; thus a child of a .10 sim and a .60 sim may end up with something I've categorized as .35, or .12, or .40.

It is perfectly fine to have more than one skin with the same genetic value; for example, I have some skins that are essentially the Maxis defaults with tatoos, and those get categorized as .10, .30, etc.

Skins with genetic value of 0 (i.e. alien or most custom skins) are strictly dominant, although I think there have been some questions about how the dominance of the Maxis alien skin really works.

The "The Mysteries of Sim DNA Unraveled" thread at MST2 is full of this stuff, although it's really really long.  There's plenty of information about eye genetics there too, I think, but as I haven't started messing with eyes myself I can't give you any advice about them.

Edit: thread is http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=19921&page=1&pp=25

Edit 2: Oh, and if you're looking for more stuff to genetic-ize, the same method that works for hair works for eyebrows, beards, etc.  I wouldn't use the 6/custom category for these, though, as I've had questionable results with it.  (The "standard" facial hair that genensims has is categorized this way.)

[Renatus]

BTW Renatus, can you point me towards some material that explains how to interpret the DNA of a sims?  I need to undestand that better.

The new version of SimPE is much more clear on what DNA is what, but I originally used this thread by Baratron to figure out what was what in earlier versions. I don't know what Age Data is but I don't think it has anything to do with skin tones. I do know that if one changes the expressed skintone string when one has Nightlife the sim will then express the new skintone back in the game (yay!). The number to change is the 1-4 number in the string - leave the zeros alone! If you want them to express a custom skintone, though, you need to know the exact number for it, and the easiest way to find that out is to look at the DNA with a sim that already has it.  The number order isn't the same as eyes or hair, though, 1 is lightest and 4 is darkest, so be aware of that!

I thought that the game assigned the eye genetics so that dk blue and brown were 1, green was 2, grey was 3 and lt blue was 4, but now I'm not at all sure. Maybe 3 or even 2 would be better for the aqua colour.

[Sleepycat]

I was wondering just the other day if we could alter the Dominant/Recessive Values

/saves page

[angelyne]

What value, then, would you recommend giving a blue eye color?  I just tried changing an aquamarine color to 4, but found that it was so hyper-recessive that the game favored even gray over it!

That's how I heard it described.  0 is custom and will always dominate, 1 is dominant, 2 is recessive, and 3 and 4 are hyper-recessive. 

So I choose 1 for brown/black and 2 for blond/red.  That correspond to mendelian genetics

[Syera]

I'll give 2 a shot.  I tried putting it on 3, and even that was too recessive.  Gah...

[IgnorantBliss]

Skins with genetic value of 0 (i.e. alien or most custom skins) are strictly dominant, although I think there have been some questions about how the dominance of the Maxis alien skin really works.

The Maxis alien skintone is dominant only when one parent is homozygous to the alien skintone gene. When a parent is heterezygous, with one alien skintone gene and one "regular" Maxis skintone gene, the alien gene turns equal with the regular ones, and has a 50% chance of expressing when inherited.

[Syera]

I changed it to a 2, and that made it Awwl Bettah!

Thanks muchly for your help, guys.    At long last, custom eyes will be a viable option.

[angelyne]

THis is a really interesting topic.

Thanks for that info Renatus.  I had read it before and my eyes sorta glazed over, since I had no intention of playing Strangetown, but this is really really useful info. And now that you told me that changing the expressed skintone value also changes the skin in the game, that solves all my problems.  I can go on a blitz and change my skins tones without having to play with Sim Surgery.

Now that Enayla has made some pretty defaults, I am going to introduce more skin colors in my game. Might even try to swap some from default to custom.  The possiblities are endless.


Edit Gad typos galore!

[Renatus]

You're welcome! I was really happy to find out that with NL the skintone changes apply without messing with Sim Surgery. It's made my life (and my indecision about custom skintones) soooo much easier.

I just tried what Aqualectrix suggested for making custom skintones properly genetic... I'm looking forward to seeing if I did it right. If I can just get this damned chapter finished I can experiment 'til bedtime...!

[angelyne]

Oh aqualectrix, does this point system mean what I think ? That a dark skin (4) sim mated to a light skin (1)will have a cafe-au-lait skin tone, somewhere in the middle (2 or 3)? 

It seems silly not to know, but I actually have never mixed skin colors in my game.  Light skins mate with light skins and  dark skin with dark.

[Pegasys]

From looking at SimPE data, it seems at least with NL, that light mixed with dark (I've done it a few times both in NL and real life) becomes somewhere in-between, and that's what they pass on to their children. In fact it appears that the only skintone they pass on is the skintone they express.

[seventhson]

angelyne, I believe that a dark (4) and light (1) skin can have children that range anywhere over the spectrum, with the game choosing any skintone between and including their parents'. Pretty sure that's how it's meant to work for any two skintones, assuming neither is dominant - so a (1) and (2) could only have (1) or (2)-skinned children, two (3)s could only have (3)-skinned children, and so on.

[aqualectrix]

I believe SeventhSon is correct; the offspring of an S1 Sim and an S4 Sim can have the S1, S2, S3, or S4 skin.  (Or, in my game, about a billion inbetween.)

[Sleepycat]

aqualectrix, Thank you! I changed all of Enaylas custom skintones so they are "Genetic-izied" *is very pleased*


Thank you to everyone for the wonderful information in this thread *laughs*


Couple questions regarding custom hair that I could not find answers to,

1, I've got all my downloaded custom hair properly binned and I wouldn't mind fixing the genetic part but do I change the genetic line under "Hair Tone XML" or "Property Set"? 

2, Is this genetic change really needed? ie; will kids get their proper hair color if the parents have custom binned hair that is not available for both genders by fixing the custom hair genetics

3, Under "Property Set" I noticed a line called "name" with a color after it, which wasn't the color of the actual hair, should that name line be changed? (not sure if that line matters at all)

Hope all that made sense, usually I never make sims with custom hair, I just change their maxis hairstyle to a custom one after they get moved into a Lot and it would be nice to not have to have to do that.

[skandelouslala]

This is an interesting thread

I would like to give this a go sometime...I'm sick of custom anything always appearing dominant.

I also agree that seventhson is right, as a have quite a few light/dark couples in my game that have popped out children have various skintones.  Definitely more realistic than the  child just getting either light or dark.

[angelyne]

Sleepycat, I'm especially pleased with the possiblity of changing some of my previously default skins.  For example Enayla has created a nice nordic type of skin, which would do quite well for my redheads and blonds, but currently they are defaul tone 1.

Also with this technique we can "Genetic-izied" all of our custom skins and so have a greater variety than the paltry 4 tones Maxis has provided us with.  We can have the whole spectrum of color from very light to very dark.  That's pretty darn cool!.  (and how convenient that Enayla has so productively produced all of those

Man I love this site I really think it's where all the smart people went when they fled MTS2
 

[aqualectrix]

Sleepycat

1. If your hair is properly binned, it actually doesn't use the Hairtone XML file anymore.
2. If your hair is properly binned, it is properly genetic-ized, in the sense that the game treats any hair binned as Blonde as if it were a Maxis blonde hair, and inheritance proceeds accordingly.  That is, the girl-child of a non-binned custom-haired mother will always inherit her mother's hair style; if the hair is binned, however, she'll get the default hair for her hair color... which is also annoying, but that's what the toddler mirror is for.
I don't actually know what the genetic field does for the hair.  It doesn't set the bin/color, so perhaps it has something to do with dominance?  Nevertheless, once a hair is binned the dominance is just like whatever you've binned it as, as far as I know.
3. You can change the "color" property to say whatever you like; as you suspect, it doesn't matter a bit.

So: yes, if your hairs are binned, you don't need to use the work-around "Maxis hair in CAS, then change to custom" you've been using.

[JaneSims]

I know most people here are really down on VS but Morague explained how to do this ages ago & even provided all of the files for the hair & skintones.

http://www.variousimmers.net/vsimforum/showthread.php?t=2169

[myskaal]

Oh good thread!

aqualectrix, sorry if this is an overly idiotic question but, about the skintone genetics and the .10 , .30 , etc. Does that mean rather than changing the genetic from 0 to 1, 2, 3 or 4 it is alright to actually use the decimals? Or does that mean just relate your numbers above to 1 - 4?

Tried your link, JaneSIms and am getting an invalid thread notice. :/

[JaneSims]

Weird - it just worked for me. Whatever. He just provided the files you need so you can change what is doninant, so you could make blond & red dominant & brownn & black recessive. or light blue eyes instead of dark blue.

[aqualectrix]

The 1/2/3/4 values are for the "skintone" field - essentially, one of the names the game uses to refer to a particular skin.  I've never messed with the skintone value, so I have no idea what it would do.
The decimal values are for the "genetic" field.  Skintone 1 has genetic .1, 2 has .3, 3 has .6 and 4 has .9.  I'm pretty sure skintone doesn't place the skin in any continuum of light-to-dark; the genetic field does.

It's nice that the skintones have this continuum; I wish the eyes, hair, etc. had something like it.