Legacy Challenge: Advanced Genetics Question

[Crystallyne]

For awhile now I've been undertaking a "Legacy" style of challenge, where I start out with 5 couples, let them have children, choose one child to "inherit" their parent's estate, and marry them off to continue that family. I rotate between families, trying to bring them all along at about the same speed. (In other words, play until the firstborn child is a child, move to the next family and get their firstborn child to child age, etc. Then on the next round get that child to a teenager, move to the next family... you get the idea.)

It's been a real challenge, and I think most people only do a single family like this, but I like the variety. And I have learned a LOT about the game and the way it works that I never would have known otherwise!

One question I'm still trying to work out is in relation to genetics. Specifically about hair color. Now I already know that black/brown is dominant, and blond/red is recessive. I know that if one parent has black hair, and the other has blond hair, all of the children will have black hair. The real question for me is this: After playing the game with multiple generations, am I going to end up with families of all black/brown haired children? Or is it possible to continue having children born now and then with red or blond hair?

I'm a bit of a control freak, OCD, perfectionist, and detail oriented. I will actually save a game just as my sim is about to give birth, and then after the child is born I'll check to see what it's personality is, as well as what hair color / eye color it has inherited from it's parents, before I decide to keep it. If I don't want it, I'll reload the game without saving, until I get a child that suits what I want. (Started doing that after having families with 5 children all with nearly the same personality, hobbies, and zodiac signs. heh) But I've run into problems in previous attempts at this challenge, and I end up starting over because I realize I've made some mistake or another (whether I realized it or not) that I feel has ruined what I had in mind for my sims.

I've just started over again with 5 new couples, going to start them in college this time and develop their relationships instead of starting off already married. I have 2 couples with black/brown hair, 2 couples with blond/red hair, and 1 couple with black/red hair. (I'm not worried about eye color, because they all use custom eye colors, which are super dominant anyways so there's an equal chance of those eye colors passing on to the children.) I know what to expect from the first generation of children. But it is generations 2, 3, and 4 that I'm wondering about. How far back do the genetics go to determine what a child may have, and is there any way for me to predict what kind of children a couple may have? (Specifically in relation to hair color.)

(Sorry for the rambling, I hope I'm clear enough about my questions. It's something I've been considering for a little while now.)

Edit: I was just thinking I should mention... Yes, I know I can change hair colors via a mirror/makeover. But I prefer to keep the hair color they're born with.

[rome_raven]

I can only give you examples of what's going on with a 4-generation family in my neighbourhood.

1st gen
»Adam: black hair, brown eyes m. Annie: red hair, dk blue eyes

2nd gen
»Bethany: black hair, brown eyes m. Brandon: brown hair, grey eyes
»Benjamin: black hair, brown eyes m. Cheryl: red hair, lt blue eyes

3rd gen
(Bethany)
»Christopher: brown hair, brown eyes m. Holly: brown hair, lt blue eyes
»Craig: brown hair, dk blue eyes m. Maddie: brown hair, grey eyes
(Benjamin)
»Catherine: black hair, lt blue eyes m. Drake: black hair, grey eyes
»Christina: red hair, dk blue eyes m. Moonunit (yes that's really his name): red hair,??

4th gen
(Bethany>Christopher)
»Delia: black hair, lt blue eyes eng. Colin: blond hair, lt blue eyes (i think)
(Bethany>Craig)
»David: brown hair, dk blue eyes
»Dana: black hair, grey eyes

(Benjamin>Catherine)
»Daniel: black hair, lt blue eyes
»Daniella: black hair, lt blue eyes
(Benjamin>Christina)
»Dingo: red hair, brown eyes??
»Dawson: red hair, grey eyes

All of my sims (with the exception of Adam), have either been townies or born in game. And they haven't married any of my other playables in the neighbourhood. 2nd gen usually follow the dominant traits but by 3rd generation, in my observations, things start to mix up. In theory, Dana and Delia shouldn't have have black hair according to their genetics. Both of their parents have brown hair and from the townie side, they only have the brown to pass on. Cheryl's (the townie) have dominated her kids and grandkids (much to my dismay). The red hair has become dominant for Christina's side and I can't wait to see how it will work once Dingo is old enough to have children (if I have my way, he'll be marrying brown haired, blue eyed Dana B. or brown haired, grey eyed Rachael and Rachael has some family genetics to pass down she's a 4th generation too)

[lauratje86]

As you said, black and brown are equally dominant, and blonde and red are equally recessive.

If you start with a black haired sim and a blonde sim, all the children (F1) will have black hair, but they will also have a "gene" for blonde hair which won't be shown. So if an F1 sim has children (F2) with a black haired sim, their children's genes will either be black/black (showing black hair), black/blonde (showing black hair). About half the F2 children will have black/black, and half will have black/blonde but all will show black hair.

However if your F1 sim (with black/blonde genes, and black hair) has children with a blonde sim, half of the F2 children will have black/blonde (showing black) and the other half wil have blonde/blonde (showing blonde hair!). So the blonde hair will not be lost completely, provided you occasionally have kids with blonde or redheads, or other sims that have been born in game that have black or brown hair but also carry a recessive blonde or redhead gene.

Oh, and rome_raven, you said that two of your sims shouldn't have black hair because both their parents had brown hair, but one of their parents was born in game to a brown haired and a black haired sim, so they must've passed on the black gene from the black haired parent to their child.

So your sims genes would've been:
Bethany black/black (black) X Brandon brown/brown (brown) ---> Christopher black/brown (brown) X Holly brown/brown (brown) ---> Delia black/brown (black)

The colours in brackets show the hair colours that the sims would show, and the colour/colour show the genes that each sim had. As black and brown are equally dominant, a black/brown sim could have either black or brown hair. If you had 10 black/brown sims, on average half would have black hair and half brown hair.

[Clashfan]

It is important to note that you do need to be either rolling the pacifier or using Pescado's batbox to randomize the genetics and avoid the first born syndrome in order to get the most variety in your game. In my prior hood when I had no idea of this if I had a black haired Sim in the founding family all subsequent offspring through gen 4 were black haired and some of them looked like clones.

In my current hood I have a huge variety for example the offspring of two of my original founding families married and have 4 kids.

Adam: black, Amber: blonde - 2 kids both black hair (Bridget, Adeline)

Algernon: brown, Cecily: red - 3 kids all brown hair (Penelope, Oliver, Prudence)

Oliver: brown, Adeline: black- 4 kids in the following order with the middle two being twins
Sierra : blond
Sean: red
Stephen: blond
Simon: black

None of them look identical but they certainly all do look related. So I'm a big believer in randomizing the genetics prior to each birth to try to ensure the largest amount of variety in the future generations.

[amyandmia]

yeah, if a person with a dominant breeds with a person with a recessive, their spawn will inherit both genes, and may pass their recessive gene on to the third generation (if they marry somebody with a recessive gene) this is what im hoping will happen to my own legacy, as all of the kids of gen.A had black hair with a blonde recessive.

[Crystallyne]

Thank you for all of your feedback! I think I'm on the right track then, from what I'm reading. Just a couple questions:

1) Does anyone know of a way to find out what genes a sim carries? In the first generation it's obvious, but after 2-3 generations I have no way of knowing what they've inherited from their parents. It'd be really nice to see it, but the only way I can think of is with SimPE, and that program frightens me. heh I'm good with computers and figuring stuff out, but if I need to do a lot of reading to figure something out, I get overwhelmed.

2) Question specifically for Clashfan, or anyone who knows what he's referring to: What is "rolling the pacifier" or the batbox? I actually haven't progressed far enough in my challenge to see how the genetics will play out over multiple generations, because I keep starting over. But my big goal is to get a multiple generation legacy neighborhood going. I'll see if I can find the batbox thing and see what it says, but not sure about the "rolling the pacifier" reference.

[Selly_2009]

Batbox: ffsdebugger at MATY (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,72.0.html) :) Save you searching high and low.
An explanation for "rolling the pacifier" can be found here (http://www.modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Pregnancy#Rolling_the_Pacifier_and_Firstborn_Syndrome).

As for the other query, I can't help there - I don't look up what my sims have inherited; to be honest I like to be surprised! However, I'd use SimPE to find out if I ever had the urge :lol:

[Crystallyne]

Thank you, Selly! That also helped clarify things further for me about what the Batbox does! (I did find it and went ahead and grabbed it, since I can just leave it in Buy mode and it won't affect my game until I actually put it in place.) And I knew about the method of going into CAS and hitting the random button repeatedly, but hadn't heard it referred to as "rolling the pacifier" before. Now it makes sense. :D

I might just have to break down and learn how to use SimPE, at least to view my sims genetics. It may help me determine which of my sims will get married down the road. :)

[ForeverCamp]

That's majorly what I use my SimPE for, is to examine genetics if I'm tracing lineage. It's really not that difficult to figure out, the main issue is learning to decipher the genetic codes. MATY (if you're not familiar with the term, that stands for More Awesome Than You, another major Sims site) has a thread, though, which contains a legend of the genetic codes. I'm just looking for it now - I've saved it on my laptop for easy access, but will find a link for you.

When you go into SimPE, go to Tools > Neighbourhood > Neighbourhood Browser > . Once that loads up, you want to click on Sim Description in the navigation menu (depending on your computer specs, I recommend waiting until the progress bar has sat silent for a bit - avoids getting a bunch of 'unknown' names). From that, a list should populate in the window next to the menu with all the sims (both playable and NPC) in that neighbourhood.

Click on the sim in question, then click the 'More' tab in Plugin View (the area below the navigation menus where the information should pop up). Click on Open Sim DNA - from there it will pop up with the "Dominant" and "Recessive" genetics - Eyes, FacialFeatures, Hair, Skintone, SkintoneRange. Mostly, these values are pretty straightforward. FacialFeatures is only present in the dominant genetics - my assumption is that those are structures directly inherited from a parent (at least judging from looking at the DNA of a Gen 3 sim I know inherited many facial structures from his father). SkintoneRange I believe signifies the skintones they can pass along.

*INTERRUPTION* Finally found that post in MATY - the original link they give in the thread is dead, so this is the post (in case we get screwed up somewhere along the line, you want to go from the home page to TS2: Burnination > The War Room > Correcting the DNA of Strangetown Premade Characters, Reply # 18 by baratron):
* Linky! * (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,1423.msg50659.html#msg50659)

Custom genetics are a bit more weird, and seeing as the only custom genetics I really have are defaults, I'm not familiar with their inheritance process. I [I]believe plain old custom genetics are dominant over everything.

I'm just searching through Pleasantview (as it's my neighbourhood with the most case studies, being in the process of birthing Gen 4) for a child with parents in two very different skintones to compare the values for the SkintoneRange fields in SimPE...

Mmm. Here we go. Rafael Caliente and his family (son of Dina Caliente and Mortimer Goth):
Skintone 1 = Light; Skintone 2 = Tan; Skintone 3 = Medium; Skintone 4 = Dark

Mortimer's expressed/recessive skintones: light/light
Mortimer's SkintoneRange values (dom/rec) : light/light

Dina's expressed/recessive skintones: medium/medium
Dina's SkintoneRange values (dom/rec) : medium/medium

Rafael's expressed/recessive skintones: tan/tan
Rafael's SkintoneRange values (dom/rec) : medium/light

... Rafael married townie Rose Dai...

Rose's expressed/recessive skintones: dark/dark
Rose's SkintoneRange values (dom/rec) : dark/dark

... Rafael and Rose have five children...
Zachary's expressed/recessive skintones: tan/tan
Zachary's SkintoneRange values (dom/rec) : dark/tan

Alyssa's expressed/recessive skintones: tan/tan
Alyssa's SkintoneRange values: dark/tan

Ethan's expressed/recessive skintones: dark/dark
Ethan's SkintoneRange values: dark/tan

Jacob's expressed/recessive skintones: medium/medium
Jacob's SkintoneRange values: dark/tan

Sean's expressed/recessive skintones: medium/medium
Sean's SkintoneRange values: dark/tan

... And just because we have a Gen 4 to compare to - Alyssa had a baby with townie Juan Harris, a medium-skin...

Lillie's expressed/recessive skintones: :wtf: Looks like she might've inherited a custom skin I believe was geneticized to be halfway between tan and medium on both her dominant and recessive. (I only have two skins outside of the four 'default', and she's too dark to be the other one, which is lighter than the light skintone)
Lillie's SkintoneRange values: tan/medium

***

Okay, so basically, class, what we've discovered here is that SkintoneRange appears to be the expressed skintone of the parents, the mother dominating over the father. The skintone inherited can be anywhere between the two values, inclusively. I still haven't quite figured out why Ethan has two 'dark' values, though... he wasn't the result of an extramarital affair...

If you're at all interested in the hair/eye range...
Eyes:
Dina: green/green
Mortimer: brown/brown

Rafael: brown/green
Rose: grey/grey

Zachary: brown/grey
Alyssa: grey/green (Juan: green/green)
Ethan: grey/green
Jacob: brown/grey
Sean: green/grey

Lillie: green/grey

Hair:
Dina: blonde/blonde
Mortimer: brown/brown

Rafael: brown/blonde
Rose: blonde/blonde (Another example of seriously effed-up townies - I actually thought Rose had red hair, but her genetics are blonde. Apparently she's a bottle redhead... Well, that explains a lot. :faceslap: I was wondering why 4 of the 5 had blonde hair...)

Zachary: blonde/blonde
Alyssa: blonde/blonde (Juan: red/red)
Ethan: blonde/blonde
Jacob: brown/blonde
Sean: blonde/blonde

Lillie: red/blonde

***

Okay, class dismissed. There will NOT be a pop quiz on this topic tomorrow! :rofl:

[Crystallyne]

Wow, so much information!! Thank you, ForeverCamp!! heheh You answered my (now) primary question, how to look at my sims genetics with SimPE! And for that I have to give a huge thanks!! That will really help me when I'm planning out my sim families for my legacies!!

[Croutonian]

Rafael's expressed/recessive skintones: tan/tan
Rafael's SkintoneRange values (dom/rec) : medium/light

... Rafael married townie Rose Dai...

Rose's expressed/recessive skintones: dark/dark
Rose's SkintoneRange values (dom/rec) : dark/dark

... Rafael and Rose have five children...


Ethan's expressed/recessive skintones: dark/dark
Ethan's SkintoneRange values: dark/tan

I still haven't quite figured out why Ethan has two 'dark' values, though... he wasn't the result of an extramarital affair...


The reason he has two 'dark' values is simply because there is no dominance with skintones, they don't actually have a dominant and recessive gene for it, just whichever one they inherit that is within the skintone range... So for Ethan, out of the options of tan(s2), medium(s3) and dark(s4) he inherited his mum's dark skin.



Rafael: brown/blonde
Rose: blonde/blonde (Another example of seriously effed-up townies - I actually thought Rose had red hair, but her genetics are blonde. Apparently she's a bottle redhead... Well, that explains a lot. :faceslap: I was wondering why 4 of the 5 had blonde hair...)


With this, it may not have been any different if Rose was actually a redhead... as both red and blonde are seen as equal, any of the kids that got the blonde gene from their dad could still have been blondes even if they'd got a red gene from Rose... only difference from her NOT being a redhead is that their kids could never have naturally had red hair!

[ForeverCamp]

Damn. I need more redheads in my Pleasantview. :lol: The browns/blacks/blondes have taken over. I have about four redheads in the neighbourhood.

[Horser01]

I realize this thread hasn't been replied to in so long you probably don't need it anymore, but I figured if I found it maybe others would read it to, so... I always keep track of my sims genetics. I like to use one or more of three options:

1) Take a picture of your founding parents. In story mode/album, write down thier hair, eye, skin colors and what ever else you want to remember. When the child is old enough that you'll know who he/she is by looking at the adult (or wait until it's an adult) take a pic of him/her and write down the same as well as who the parents were, grandparents, aunts, etc. As well as eye, hair, skin color, etc. If the child moves out, have them paint a portrait of their parents and stick it in their inventory before leaving. Then restart the story with a summary in the new house.

2) Do the same as above but on paper and without pictures. For example:
James = ? + ? Red hair, green eyes, medium pale skin.
Sarah = ? + ? Blond hair, blue eyes, pale skin
Mary = James + Sarah. Green eyes, Blond hair, Pale skin.
This way you can actually draw a family tree...

3) Number your children. It could be in the biograpy area, in the name, on paper, or in the story mode. There are two ways to do so. 1) Number each person, then the child is Mary 1+2, 1 being her father, 2 being her mother, (that way if you have a promiscuis 'breeder' you can do stuff like Mary 1+2, John 1+3, Markus 1+3) OR number the parents or breeders, and sum the children... For example, in the above line, Mary would be 3, while John and Markus would be 4.

...I hope that's not too confusing, but that's how I do it and it works really well for me.

[Howeller98]

I have a.. census... if you will. I write Name, Age, Eye and Hair colour, that way, I know who has what hair colour, and who to pair for a certain hair colour.

[Lady L.]

There's also a way to see your sim's genetics in-game. You need to create a userstartup.cheat file, and put boolprop testingcheatsenabled true in it. Then, when you've loaded a lot and the sim in question is on it, just type "simdna firstname" where firstname is, obviously, the first name of the sim whose DNA you want to see. It will show you the dominant and recessive genetics.

Instructions for the userstartup.cheat file are here

http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=84924

[GEGNER]

May not be as helpful, but the game can throw you a curve sometimes: I was on the third generation of my legacy (first gen. being red/brown, second being black/black) And of five children one had naturally blonde hair although nobody in the family had blonde hair.

[CocoMouse]

did your sims marry any townies/NPCs/premades that might have had "dyed" hair?