The Sims 2 — Attack of the Clones!
I’ve been playing for a few hours tonight and a lot has happened since my last update. First Bette aged into a teen and then Constance joined her. Darleen aged into a toddler and Ella was born. Darleen aged into a child and Ella aged into a toddler. So there is much to update.
First let’s look at the teenagers.
Now we have four children in the house! The fourth hasn’t yet grown up into a toddler so I won’t be updating you on the baby’s stats just yet. But we do have news of Constance and some pictures.
To start with, I got a better picture of her. I decided to get the high chair because when the toddlers are in it, it puts them at a perfect angle to have their picture taken. This shows off her toddler features a lot better and adds something to my confusion as you may notice later in her child picture. It seems that the features that they have inherited genetically for each age differ from one another so that there are some dramatic changes from one age to the next.
The First Major Age Transition
Before Constance was born Armond aged into a child. Before Constance aged into a toddler, Bette aged into a child. This allowed me to further compare the two older children for physical differences and allowed me to note one additional physical difference between them.
Please click “more” for pictures and more information.
I tried three times to do this last night and my browser kept crashing about halfway through the post. I’m going to try typing this up in a text editor and then copying and pasting since that way I won’t be at risk of losing all of my information that way!
Child #3 was born after a four-day pregnancy (this was Alyssa’s third four-day pregnancy in my game. I’m not sure why this keeps happening). The details are as follows:
Alyssa initiated the “try for baby” interaction. Unfortunately my system began to run incredibly low on memory about that time and I had to reboot the computer, which means that any result in gender is irrelevant because a restart can change the gender of the resulting offspring.
So far things are going well with the experiment. Then suddenly I realized: If my previous results were atypical, I need a control subject. Because the results are based on my game and therefore apparently on my system, I can’t run the control on my own computer. I need somebody else to do so for me.
So I am seeking another person to act as the control subject for the experiment. The requirements are as follows:
1. Control subject MUST have experienced problems with identical offspring (in physicality and personality) within their game. In order to qualify the identical offspring must be greater than four in number (there is a good chance of two being identical based on randomness in the game).
2. Control Subject MUST be able to take clear snapshots in the game. Fuzzy photos don’t prove anything!
3. Control Subject MUST be able to provide information through a blog so that images can be connected to the information easily. This is far more difficult in a forum or group.
4. It is best if the control subject starts out with parents who are genetically identical to my own. This is pretty simple as I didn’t change them much apart from hair and makeup. The heads are basic CAS heads.
5. Control Subject MUST be willing to communicate the results of the experiment publically.
If anybody is up to doing this experiment with me, please let me know and I will make arrangements. If you don’t have your own blog I can get you one easily enough. Note that in order to PROVE anything a control is necessary. It is best if more than two people perform the same experiment and will be interesting to see how results differ!
This post details the results of part of an experiment I am currently running. For more information about this experiment, please click here.
This is experiment one. The details of this particular experiment are as follows:
Create two CAS characters and have them move onto a lot. These two sims will then have ten or more children (as many as I can manage up to one for each letter of the alphabet — just for fun!). No random sims will be rolled in CAS between births and no NPCs or Townies will be moved onto the lot.
Due to some discussion at the TS2 Unversity Legacy Challenge Yahoo! Group I thought I’d run an experiment in sim genetics. One member suggested rolling some random sims in CAS before the birth of a baby as that seems to have an effect on the ‘randomness’ of the resulting child’s genetic structure, both physically and psychologically (exhibited in the personality of the offspring).
In several families I had not had a problem with genetics not being random. In fact, in only one family did the children look alike (they were impossible to tell apart when they were in the same age group and looked exactly like their father) and that considered, their personalities were still different from one another — albeit not far different.
Further, someone suggested that the parent initiating the “try for baby” interaction determined the gender of the resulting child.
Discussion followed and we thought that perhaps a randomly generated NPC or Townie (following an NPC or townie being moved onto the lot) might count as a randomly generated sim and therefore affect the randomness of the sim genetics.
Of course all this got my scientific mind to thinking. Now I have to run the experiments to find out what’s going on with the game.
Please keep reading for the details.