Until now, I didn't realize that genetics and initial physical image was such a huge deal for some Simmers. To be totally honest, I don't understand the purpose or the goal of having Sims with 'perfect genetics'. I see that as being a personal thing individual to the Simmer desiring it.
For myself, I will immediately change a Sims looks if it has been shown to cause interference with their lives, after all the Sims is a social game. Sims such as Arlo Bunch, while not attractive to my eyes, have no problems socializing and building relationships in my game so there is no need for me to alter him. However, teenage Sims like Celeste GilsCarbo (Barnacle Bay) life was severely limited in part due to her looks. She had no friends, no skills except for a single point in guitar, her mother abandoned her which created hard feelings towards her family. Her step-brother thought she made an excellent romantic 'practice' partner in private but would belittle her in public. On top of that, she was working at the day Spa to pay the bills all the while failing at school.
Celeste is the only Sim I have ever almost totally remodeled because of those conditions. Her life is now a complete 180 from where she started. My goal wasn't to make her a raving beauty, just give her a better chance of being socially acceptable so she could grow.
In times of Darkness, Turn on you Light of Love and Let it Shine!
@mw1525 I rarely alter the look of my sims. I like them all to be unique. It's just that the two I changed their skin sliders for just didn't seem to fit into their families.
One of the reasons I reuse sims I made up to 10 years ago is because my style of making sims has changed over the years and adding them to my new games generates even greater diversity to the appearances of my sims.
I was a bit disappointed when it seems this skin doesn't appear to be passed on genetically. I have it in several different colours.
I was guilty of changing the shape of the face of one of my sims once when I made him and his wife with dramatically different head shapes. She had a long narrow face and he had a short wide face. I experimented with 'play with genetics' and they produced a monster. The top half of the child's head was wide with a totally horizontal line across the bottom of that part of the head and a very long narrow jaw under it. I didn't get a pic as the sight was too terrifying. It looked like the child had been attacked with a chainsaw or something with its head sliced in half just above the mouth. Then a wide top of another head placed on top of the narrow jaw below. I think if the division between the top and bottom halves of the face wasn't so completely flat I might have gone with it.
The 'Perfect Genetics Challenge' I'm doing and making a video series is a different idea entirely. The point of that is to make a sim with distinctive eye and hair colour. And she has to have babies until she produces a child with the exact same eye and hair colour. That baby grows up to be the next generation and has to have babies until one has the same eye and hair colour. This goes on for 10 generations and then the challenge is done. In the challenge I'm doing, my founder and all of her heirs have purplish pink eyes and hair. The founder has pale blue skin - her husband is pale olive green skin and his hair is greenish too. The first heir has inherited her mother's hair and eyes, but she has her father's green skin. Plus, the founder and each heir has to have the 'Dislikes Children' trait.
This is my founder
And this is the first heir. She's only a child so far in the challenge.
@Karritz - Your fairy Sims are beautifully exotic looking. Good Luck with your challenge. Out of curiosity, what happens to the Sims who are born but do not become heirs? Do you save their file and store them away for later game play ideas? Or, are they discarded?
In times of Darkness, Turn on you Light of Love and Let it Shine!
@Karritz - Your fairy Sims are beautifully exotic looking. Good Luck with your challenge. Out of curiosity, what happens to the Sims who are born but do not become heirs? Do you save their file and store them away for later game play ideas? Or, are they discarded?
I still have them in the household. I'm treating them like any other sim. No idea what I'm going to do with them eventually. I'm sort of thinking I'll probably keep some in the household and move others out. Probably let them live out their lives elsewhere in the world but include them in family gatherings. I'm used to working with huge households. The most I've had in any one save so far is around 50 sims, but that was short term just for a huge family wedding. My Big Game has over 700 sim in it and they live in multiple worlds but they keep track of their friends and family members.
But with the Perfect Genetics Challenge Sims - I just haven't decided definitely yet. I'll probably do something different with each of them as ideas come to me. The rules of the challenge are only regarding the hair and eye colour and the one trait each heir must have. Otherwise each player seems to be able to make up their own rules regarding all else.
@Karritz Yes, that's how I meant the term. In principle, you could make a "perfect genetics" challenge that has the goal to preserve the ears and the nose of Tay for a sim to qualify as the heir. That's a bit more complicated to judge than eye and hair color, but it should be feasible. Playing around with aspects like this is one of the fun things you can do in this game.
@Turjan - My apologies if I misunderstood what you meant by "But let's face it, the sentiments that sparked this thread ran more along the lines of a "perfect genetics" challenge." To me, it read as if you were saying, this thread went astray from my initial query and had become something else.
I play with the game's logic, it's what I am familiar with. Any talks or references to Sims and their genetic make-up, sliders or similarities within the family tree that are not personality related are pretty much lost on me. As I said, when I look at a Sim all I see is the possible potential in that Sim, the rest is just wrapping (to me) books/covers and all that jazz.
In times of Darkness, Turn on you Light of Love and Let it Shine!
I play with the game's logic, it's what I am familiar with. Any talks or references to Sims and their genetic make-up, sliders or similarities within the family tree that are not personality related are pretty much lost on me. As I said, when I look at a Sim all I see is the possible potential in that Sim, the rest is just wrapping (to me) books/covers and all that jazz.
Genetics are well within the game's logic. The physical properties are actually the only thing the children inherit from their parents, with the exception of some hidden traits (like "can apprehend burglar", etc.). Traits, skills or goals in life are either the result of pure luck, in case the game rolls this, or the player's choice, if he's good at parenting. And yes, seeing the parents live on in their children is something I draw some satisfaction from. It's part of the game as I play it.
@Mikizumi - I have nothing against the play style of those who want beautiful and intelligent, personable Sims, not what I am saying. What I said was 'for me' their appearance is the last thing I see.
In times of Darkness, Turn on you Light of Love and Let it Shine!
@Turjan - The Genetics system as I understand it are a part of the game's mechanics and a separate function (logical calculation based on the Sim's physical attributes to show changes in subjects). This is not the logic I am referring to. The logic I speak of and play with lies in the autonomy system. There's nothing physical in the autonomy system it's all data.
In times of Darkness, Turn on you Light of Love and Let it Shine!
Yes, all of it is data. Some data is hard coded in. Some data is script changeable. And other data such as the algorithms which motivate the autonomy system are calculated. So while our computer game is composed of nothing but bits of information. All of the information is not the same, neither in source nor function.
In times of Darkness, Turn on you Light of Love and Let it Shine!
Genetics are well within the game's logic. The physical properties are actually the only thing the children inherit from their parents, with the exception of some hidden traits (like "can apprehend burglar", etc.). Traits, skills or goals in life are either the result of pure luck, in case the game rolls this, or the player's choice, if he's good at parenting. And yes, seeing the parents live on in their children is something I draw some satisfaction from. It's part of the game as I play it.
As in real life, I love to see family features passed down. When I see my son or nieces and nephews, it is comforting to see traces of my siblings and deceased parents in them
My son, who is my mini-me looks-wise, is nothing like me in temperament or personality but there's no denying he's family
I'm prissy enough about genes to see exactly why people don't like Tay or his family but I seriously did get one of my favorite sims from him too:
Yeah I know he didn't really get much from dad but he got Tay's mouth, and I think it does illuminate something I see in "ugly" sims: I can't think of any (EA made) infamous ugly sim that has absolutely zero redeeming facial features. Tay has a wide mouth with thin lips but it's hardly something to nitpick over. Faces are mostly inherited by whole parts and sometimes you just have to gamble to isolate a part that's not so bad. Which is still a "prissy about genes" kind of way to word it.
My sim's wishes matter the most in gameplay so if they really want an ugly sim with an awful personality I'll let them at least try it out. They're not programmed to be shallow after all (anyways it's a crime that they didn't bring back turn ons/turn offs and still won't for TS4)
Now that I have seen him, I would like to get to know the Tay Bayless Sim. It's his personality that I am most interested in, looks aside. I want to see how he moves in game and responds to things. Since he starts out as a child he should be a bit more flexible than the adults to get to know.
I definitely haven't seen shallowness in this game as in truly superficial. I have, however, experienced them being very selective in whom they prefer to get to know even when traits and other factors suggest they should at least get along.
In times of Darkness, Turn on you Light of Love and Let it Shine!
Until now, I didn't realize that genetics and initial physical image was such a huge deal for some Simmers. To be totally honest, I don't understand the purpose or the goal of having Sims with 'perfect genetics'. I see that as being a personal thing individual to the Simmer desiring it.
^I'm with you on that.
I like to go for realism as much as possible in my sims game and stories.
I actually featured Tay Bayless in my very first SimLit ever, My Holland Family Story. And now he's one of the main characters out of many.
He was a good kid, that got teased for his large ears naturally (because kids can be really mean), but he ended up landing a good catch in the romance department. (Molly Holland) Mostly because she could see how sweet and genuine he was underneath his "flaws" and was able to look past that and fall in love with him.
Anyone who reads that story might consider this foreshadowing but the readers will see just how great of a man Tay really is as the story progresses.
Let me see if I can dig up some pics of him from my story.
He didn't appear in the story until he was a teenager so here's how he looked aged up to a teen. (EA chosen hair):
^He received some rather shocking news.
Here he is proposing to his girl (Molly) and yes they were both teens at the time.
Of course she said Yes!
^As you can see his ears are quite large and prevalent.
Later as he grew into a YA, I gotta admit his ears were too large and unrealistic to me as well (remember, I like to go for realism in my stories) so he got "plastic surgery" to reduce them.
Before:
After:
(Wish he hadn't blinked)
I didn't change any other facial features on him, except for maybe tweaking his nose slightly, but that was it!
Here's a better pic of how he looks currently in my game:
^Truthfully I think he looks rather sexy in this pic.
As you can see, he and Molly had a son. (Shawn). He did inherit the large ears as you can kinda see in that picture and this one:
And I don't remember if I reduced them at all when he aged up, but I'm thinking if I did it was very slight. He's really a cute kiddo.
So anyway, I can see how some simmers might not like his looks because they are quite unrealistic - in a painful way - but he does have some decent genetics to offer. His offspring are unique looking and honestly...I like to see more uniqueness among sims in my game instead of the random EA generated townies look (aka: Pudding) you know?
OMG, I watched this and realized I was talking to @ZeeGee about Arlo Bunch (a few years back?). She was going to try to give him a makeover, but I don't recall if she did or not.
Just scratch my prior post...........I'm guilty
@FairyGodMother Of course, you're always guilty. (Um, why don't the emojis work anymore? Typing the colon doesn't work anymore?) Anyways.... I have a very vague memory of that conversation! If I remember correctly back then I had a makeover policy of NEVER changing sliders on a townie sim. I would only change there hair, skin and/or makeup. I took one look at grown up Arlo, screamed, unplugged my computer and ran for the eyewash.
@igazor Pairing Arlo and Tay?!?! You're brave!! Results were not as bad as expected.
@Karritz I have looked EVERYWHERE for the skin with the forehead jewels! I saw it in a machinima and it is so pretty. Can you possibly link to it?
@igazor Pairing Arlo and Tay?!?! You're brave!! Results were not as bad as expected.
Agreed on the results, but that wasn't me. My contribution to the MTS thread was the four kids Tay had with my sim, someone born in-game. It's closer to the beginning, behind a spoiler.
@Mikezumi That's IT!! Thank you so much!! (ETA: That download link was broken but now knowing the name of the skin I found a link on WCIF at MTS)
@igazor Oh, sorry. I thought the pics you posted in the spoiler were children of Tay and Arlo. I just went back and had another look where you clearly said it was one of your sims and Tay. I'm scatter brained.
@zeegee it's by Moonskin93 and I found it on her tmblr. But last time I looked she'd taken it down. There are other skins there you might like though. The skins I've shown above are incomplete. For example, I don't think it has toddler or child versions and I'm not sure of teen either. It does have a young adult version, which is what I've shown there. I think it does have an adult version too. The elder version is body only - the face is just a default human looking face in the elder version. So when they vanished from her tmblr I hoped she may have been going to update/complete them but she may have just removed them. The skins are Gods of the Elements. Or something similar.
@simmerLella - Yeah, Arlo was a bit of a shock in my game when I first met him as a teen. He was the friend of my Sim, but she would never let them become anything more than friends .
Another shocker of child turned teen was Mortimer Goth. When I met his teen version, I couldn't believe how handsome he turned out. He wasn't a particularly cute child to me, too solemn and serious looking.
Aww, I find Mortimer cute and fun, but Bella looks like she has an awkward phase through childhood.
"Challenge everything" My Sims blog
Sims Crush: Kyle Shalom
@ZeeGee you made me have a closer look and I found what looks like her work on Sims File Share. It is Gods of the Elements you were looking at above, the Guardian of the Elements or Gods of Gems (not sure of the name at the moment) is similar but a bit different. Not quite as opulent. I have both. I have a lot of her skins but haven't used many of them yet. One of her cat type skins was the inspiration for my McFluff story.
Comments
For myself, I will immediately change a Sims looks if it has been shown to cause interference with their lives, after all the Sims is a social game. Sims such as Arlo Bunch, while not attractive to my eyes, have no problems socializing and building relationships in my game so there is no need for me to alter him. However, teenage Sims like Celeste GilsCarbo (Barnacle Bay) life was severely limited in part due to her looks. She had no friends, no skills except for a single point in guitar, her mother abandoned her which created hard feelings towards her family. Her step-brother thought she made an excellent romantic 'practice' partner in private but would belittle her in public. On top of that, she was working at the day Spa to pay the bills all the while failing at school.
Celeste is the only Sim I have ever almost totally remodeled because of those conditions. Her life is now a complete 180 from where she started. My goal wasn't to make her a raving beauty, just give her a better chance of being socially acceptable so she could grow.
One of the reasons I reuse sims I made up to 10 years ago is because my style of making sims has changed over the years and adding them to my new games generates even greater diversity to the appearances of my sims.
I was a bit disappointed when it seems this skin doesn't appear to be passed on genetically. I have it in several different colours.
I was guilty of changing the shape of the face of one of my sims once when I made him and his wife with dramatically different head shapes. She had a long narrow face and he had a short wide face. I experimented with 'play with genetics' and they produced a monster. The top half of the child's head was wide with a totally horizontal line across the bottom of that part of the head and a very long narrow jaw under it. I didn't get a pic as the sight was too terrifying. It looked like the child had been attacked with a chainsaw or something with its head sliced in half just above the mouth. Then a wide top of another head placed on top of the narrow jaw below. I think if the division between the top and bottom halves of the face wasn't so completely flat I might have gone with it.
The 'Perfect Genetics Challenge' I'm doing and making a video series is a different idea entirely. The point of that is to make a sim with distinctive eye and hair colour. And she has to have babies until she produces a child with the exact same eye and hair colour. That baby grows up to be the next generation and has to have babies until one has the same eye and hair colour. This goes on for 10 generations and then the challenge is done. In the challenge I'm doing, my founder and all of her heirs have purplish pink eyes and hair. The founder has pale blue skin - her husband is pale olive green skin and his hair is greenish too. The first heir has inherited her mother's hair and eyes, but she has her father's green skin. Plus, the founder and each heir has to have the 'Dislikes Children' trait.
This is my founder
And this is the first heir. She's only a child so far in the challenge.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuW44b3uCMtCSaq4gwC8EZg
I still have them in the household. I'm treating them like any other sim. No idea what I'm going to do with them eventually. I'm sort of thinking I'll probably keep some in the household and move others out. Probably let them live out their lives elsewhere in the world but include them in family gatherings. I'm used to working with huge households. The most I've had in any one save so far is around 50 sims, but that was short term just for a huge family wedding. My Big Game has over 700 sim in it and they live in multiple worlds but they keep track of their friends and family members.
But with the Perfect Genetics Challenge Sims - I just haven't decided definitely yet. I'll probably do something different with each of them as ideas come to me. The rules of the challenge are only regarding the hair and eye colour and the one trait each heir must have. Otherwise each player seems to be able to make up their own rules regarding all else.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuW44b3uCMtCSaq4gwC8EZg
I play with the game's logic, it's what I am familiar with. Any talks or references to Sims and their genetic make-up, sliders or similarities within the family tree that are not personality related are pretty much lost on me. As I said, when I look at a Sim all I see is the possible potential in that Sim, the rest is just wrapping (to me) books/covers and all that jazz.
Zumi and the Winchester Brothers
The Watcher's Caretaker - A Limited ISBI
As in real life, I love to see family features passed down. When I see my son or nieces and nephews, it is comforting to see traces of my siblings and deceased parents in them
My son, who is my mini-me looks-wise, is nothing like me in temperament or personality but there's no denying he's family
Zumi and the Winchester Brothers
The Watcher's Caretaker - A Limited ISBI
Yeah I know he didn't really get much from dad but he got Tay's mouth, and I think it does illuminate something I see in "ugly" sims: I can't think of any (EA made) infamous ugly sim that has absolutely zero redeeming facial features. Tay has a wide mouth with thin lips but it's hardly something to nitpick over. Faces are mostly inherited by whole parts and sometimes you just have to gamble to isolate a part that's not so bad. Which is still a "prissy about genes" kind of way to word it.
My sim's wishes matter the most in gameplay so if they really want an ugly sim with an awful personality I'll let them at least try it out. They're not programmed to be shallow after all (anyways it's a crime that they didn't bring back turn ons/turn offs and still won't for TS4)
I definitely haven't seen shallowness in this game as in truly superficial. I have, however, experienced them being very selective in whom they prefer to get to know even when traits and other factors suggest they should at least get along.
^Well played @Igazor
@mw1525 ^I'm with you on that.
I like to go for realism as much as possible in my sims game and stories.
I actually featured Tay Bayless in my very first SimLit ever, My Holland Family Story.
He was a good kid, that got teased for his large ears naturally (because kids can be really mean), but he ended up landing a good catch in the romance department.
Anyone who reads that story might consider this foreshadowing
Let me see if I can dig up some pics of him from my story.
He didn't appear in the story until he was a teenager so here's how he looked aged up to a teen. (EA chosen hair):
^He received some rather shocking news.
Here he is proposing to his girl (Molly) and yes they were both teens at the time.
Of course she said Yes!
^As you can see his ears are quite large and prevalent.
Later as he grew into a YA, I gotta admit his ears were too large and unrealistic to me as well (remember, I like to go for realism in my stories) so he got "plastic surgery" to reduce them.
Before:
After:
(Wish he hadn't blinked)
I didn't change any other facial features on him, except for maybe tweaking his nose slightly, but that was it!
Here's a better pic of how he looks currently in my game:
^Truthfully I think he looks rather sexy in this pic.
As you can see, he and Molly had a son. (Shawn). He did inherit the large ears as you can kinda see in that picture and this one:
And I don't remember if I reduced them at all when he aged up, but I'm thinking if I did it was very slight. He's really a cute kiddo.
So anyway, I can see how some simmers might not like his looks because they are quite unrealistic - in a painful way - but he does have some decent genetics to offer. His offspring are unique looking and honestly...I like to see more uniqueness among sims in my game instead of the random EA generated townies look (aka: Pudding) you know?
That's just my two cents.
@FairyGodMother Of course, you're always guilty.
@igazor Pairing Arlo and Tay?!?! You're brave!! Results were not as bad as expected.
@Karritz I have looked EVERYWHERE for the skin with the forehead jewels! I saw it in a machinima and it is so pretty. Can you possibly link to it?
Zumi and the Winchester Brothers
The Watcher's Caretaker - A Limited ISBI
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
@igazor Oh, sorry. I thought the pics you posted in the spoiler were children of Tay and Arlo. I just went back and had another look where you clearly said it was one of your sims and Tay. I'm scatter brained.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuW44b3uCMtCSaq4gwC8EZg
Aww, I find Mortimer cute and fun, but Bella looks like she has an awkward phase through childhood.
My Sims blog
Sims Crush: Kyle Shalom
@simmerLella Mortimer is hot. Bella needs a little tweaking. Her awkward phase lasted through adulthood.
Zumi and the Winchester Brothers
The Watcher's Caretaker - A Limited ISBI
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuW44b3uCMtCSaq4gwC8EZg