My Sim just gave birth to a girl. Her first child has 3 neatness, 10 outgoing and active, and 6 playful and nice. Only problem is that their second child has the same personality. She is a Gemini like her brother. They also have the same predestined hobby, which is Fitness. Is this a bug or a coincidence?

... maybe they're secretly twins?

Was this the first baby born after starting up the game? And does the baby have the same genetics as the brother? If so, it could be related to the fristborn syndrome (not rolled pacifier). It makes the first babies each session into relative clones with the same genetics: http://simswiki.info/wiki.php%3Ftit...stborn_Syndrome

Lol they're prob not secretly twins. She has brown hair, brown eyes, while her older brother has brown hair and grey eyes.

Could just be be a weird coincidence with randomized identical personality.

Yeah...

Could be first-born syndrome (although "victims" of such usually have the same genetics, too) or it could just be how the personalities of the parents combine. In you look at a Sim's info in SimPE you'll see they have an expressed personality (the points you see on their panel in-game) and a "genetic personality," which can be very different than their expressed personality. Here's one of the Sims in my testing hood:


I believe it's the "genetic personality" that contributes to born-in-game children's personalities, not the expressed one. If two parents have very similar genetic personalities, then there isn't much "wiggle room" for the game to create a unique personality for any kids they have. In general, I'm guessing this "genetic personality" is how the game creates some personality diversity, since Sims of similar personalities tend to have higher chemistry, and people (who aren't me, at least; I like "opposites" couples with negative chemistry ) tend to pair their Sim's off with compatible-personality Sims.

EDITED to add: If the kids having the same personality bothers you, you can change them in SimPE, if you can run it. Maybe use a random number generator to pick the new personality point sliders. Or, if you can't run SimPE, I think you can change a Sim's zodiac sign with any number of modded objects, like the Sim Blender. Zodiac signs each have a "base" personality assigned to them.

Sim Blender has an option to randomize the expressed personality. If you like what you get, it has an option to copy that to the genetic personality. It also has an option to go the other way and make the expressed personality match the genetic one. You can actually see the genetic personality in the UI while playing; if you look just below the blue bars that show the expressed personality, there is a faint line for each personality section that is showing the genetic personality. Usually these lines are the same length as the row of blue bars because the genetic and expressed personalities are the same, but you can see the difference if you play with sim blender.

No you have first born syndrome, where the game copies the first child. You need to load CAS when you first load the game and spin the random sim maker button. People often call it spinning the pacifier, but you don't need to go to where the pacifier is, random sim button does it just as well. I always load CAS and do this first even if I don't truly need to. You will find houses load faster and the change appearance window opens faster as well.

Did you know that when you make sims in CAS, the game temporarily makes a sim file for them and puts it in the Characters folder? It then promptly deletes that file if you don't initialise the sim so there's no corruption issue.

No, I didn't know that. They don't even make it to the photograph area only in front of the mirror so I wonder at which point the game makes the file? While randomizing or perhaps once the first tick is done and it goes to the next area in CAS.

Just to confirm what maxon says:

If I'm making Sims in CAS, the game creates a new character file for each Sim I make. It creates the file as soon as the Sim appears beside the mirror. They go into the Characters folder of whichever 'hood I have open. If I accept the new family, the game keeps the files. If I cancel the family and return to the neighbourhood, then it deletes them. There have even been occasions when the game has crashed with a family half made in CAS. When I restart the game and reopen the neighbourhood, it safely deletes the files. As far as I can see, this doesn't cause any corruption. It seems to be one thing Maxis did absolutely right.

I noticed this particularly when I was loading CAS to try out new skin, eye and hair genetics, to decide whether I wanted to keep them before loading a lot and letting my game grab the townified ones. Or trying out new CC clothing. Lots of test Sims, none of them saved. In most cases I cancelled out before getting to the personality stage, and I think - but haven't dropped down to the OS to check for certain - that it must create the file when you click + to create the Sim or pet, then attaches the details to it as you select them. From a programming point of view that would make most sense.

Any Sims you make in the same playing session will get assigned the next available number, whether you keep them or not. There'll just be gaps in the numbering for the abandoned ones.

The only traces I've ever seen of them were when running the HoodChecker afterwards. I got several "Sim does not exist: 0x00xx has relationship with self" messages. They seemed fairly harmless though, and later Sims that were assigned the same numbers didn't end up with bizarre wants or aspirations so it looks like Maxis could almost manage a clean delete in certain circumstances.

That's slightly worrying - it means the game is writing something to the neighbourhood files even if the sim file is not saved. Personally, I test everything in a test neighbourhood (which I regularly delete and recreate). I'll roll the pacifier in there too if I know I've got a birth coming up.

Also, did you know, and I'm posting this because people didn't know the game made sim files in CAS, that if you randomly create sims as townies or whatever using the gravestone or the townie gun and then decide you don't want them, their sim file is permanently added to your neighbourhood? I'm not sure if it's a deleted one or not - perhaps I should test that.

Those sim files are not deleted. According to Mootilda, if a sim is spawned from the townie gun and then rejected using the "kill" option, that sim is given an "I am dead" token and added to your neighborhood. I've seen these show up in teleporters (SimBlender, Inge's teleporter cat/shrub) under the Default category along with the ghosts and the universal NPCs. The rejected sims are there and seem to be complete (I can summon them with a teleporter), but apparently can't be resurrected or turned into ghosts (maybe with SimPE?). I tried once with an old neighborhood. I decided that since the game thought they were dead anway, that I would just respawn graves for them and add them to the local cemetery, but apparently there's more to it than that.

I could swear that I saw a post by Mootilda to the effect that she once helped somebody remove several hundred of these rejected sims from their neighborhood. I searched for nearly an hour and all I could find was my own old post mentioning it. (http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...119#post4951119)

I did find several other of Mootilda's old posts that might be important (not related to this subject though) and am saving them to my hard drive. At least that way I may be able to find them again someday.

Ah, might have known someone checked - good, saves me a job. I guess it's the same as the ones you can make with the tombstone - though those aren't townies. Maybe you have to manually kill those since they're usually added to the family.

I mostly do the same, but this is a test neighbourhood of sorts, just one that I'm playing out the characters in, so I was a bit lax with it. I've been more conscientious about dropping CAS CC into my throwaway test hood since I cleaned it up though. And obviously I've kept a note of the character numbers reported so I can keep an eye on those of them that have been recycled.

Not sure if that was a one off or if it's consistent behaviour after abandoning a CAS Sim creation - it's fiddly getting HoodChecker to run on a Mac so I don't do it very often.