Maxis Premade Sim Genetics

[strangetomato]

I've been thinking about the Good Genes III contest at GoS, and what really interests me in it is not wondering if the ugly would breed out (I think we all knew it would, given three generations), but which Maxis sim features you're left with. Planning for those three faces to blend with an attractive (and hopefully unique) final result is what made it so interesting to me. A lot of people go the Face One/Face Two route, but are their sims interesting enough to win the contest? Pretty is pretty, but what stands out enough to win? It remains to be seen, I guess. I know I'm more interested in seeing the diamonds in the rough, making pretty from unexpected gene choices. I'd like to see people receive bonus points for using a sim like Chester Gieke or Malcolm Landgraab, but lose points for every Brandi, Ajay, Don, or Cyd (or any other Face One/Two type).

Speaking of odd gene choices, I'm surprised that so many people have used Oberon (he's at least as popular as Don Lothario), because his nose is so wide and he's just not as conventional as the other sims that get re-used frequently. Also, Lilith Pleasant gets used a LOT and have you ever seen what that nose looks like on a male sim? It's intense. I'm really surprised that I'm the only one so far (I think...) that has used Ripp Grunt. He has really attractive features (for a man, at least... his daughters need to worry about the chin). Are any of the choices surprising you?

I've been thinking about devising my own variation on a Maxis sim breeding challenge, but have people start with Face One and aim to remove it, but still end up with something attractive. I'm not sure I'm up for the work of designing it, but it'd be something fun to do. Perhaps I'll suggest it for a Maxis_taste challenge.

Comments

[remisims.livejournal.com]

That would be interesting, I'd be up for trying it.

[muslemura.livejournal.com]

From pretty/boring to pretty/interesting - I like the idea and think you're right, it could work as an Maxis_taste challenge :)

Ripp's genes always work out well in my game, I even like the chin on girls, except sometimes when paired with a face shorter than the standard length... I've had some a bit too interesting results - yikes!

[rome-raven81.livejournal.com]

I don't really use maxis faces myself but since I finally got the megahood to work in my game and I'm noticing some pretty interesting faces. Also after seeing the results of the Good Genes III, I'm liking the results. I would be interested to give this a try as well. When? That's the next issue to challenge.

[emmelfish.livejournal.com]

Sounds like an awesome challenge, you should certainly do it for maxis_taste. :) I love the unique facial quirks of the premades, I get especially narked when I see simmers messing around with surgery and transforming the likes of Vidcund, Florence, Malcolm and Klara into Face Ones (had a big discussion with meetme2theriver about it recently), the results are boringly vanilla. Big love to the Ripp chins and the Frances noses!

[rustyrosesims.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that as I looked through the submissions - you should suggest it.

(And I'll admit that I was impressed with your result of combining JRO's genes. Here's rooting for you!)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I had the attention span of a gnat for things like this (you have no idea how many half-started projects I have that've never been posted), but I'll try to work out my thoughts enough to suggest it to Ale at Maxis_taste.

Thanks! I don't imagine I really have a shot at winning it, but it was fun to enter. I thought Imogen turned out pretty well, too.

[nimsims.livejournal.com]

the ugly didn't get bred out of mine... i ended up with duck bills up to the very last one. used 3 premades and a game generated townie... kinda jealous at the pretty people lol i used nervous subject, pascal curious, and ophelia nigmos as my maxis sims...

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

You had the duck bill even in the last generation? Wow. Not even Nervous could trump those genes! I guess you didn't submit it. :P The super extreme features of Sy did seem to hang on for a very long time in many games.

The duck bills are so funny. I always giggle when I see those results in the challenge thread. (And it's not nearly as frightening as the eyeless sims that seem to come out of the breeding. Yikes!)

[nimsims.livejournal.com]

its on my lj if you want to see the results :p i was reminded though that i was playing it on hard mode cause i only did one kid per gen instead of 3, which is why i had such a hard time breeding out the duck bill. it wasn't the full on duck bill though, just this weird nose folded into top lip pointy thing sticking out of their face! lol

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I just had a look, and those are some crazy, umm, lip... shards? XD

You should give it another go! Using Nervous in the first round isn't such a bad idea. I've had some cuteness come from Nervous breeding in the past. It's not exactly conventional cute, but he has his charm.

[madame-ugly.livejournal.com]

So and Uglification Challenge using only Maxis stock?

Interesting.

A few drops of Ottomas, a dash of Landgraab, and a sprinkle of Roque and you might end up with a "Chucky"!

(and don't you fret, Chester will get a shot with Sy Snootles--the minute I saw the challenge Chester made the list of "what ifs"--my submission may not be pretty but it's going to be different, that I can guarantee!)

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

Hey, Violet Joque is really pretty. :) I considered using her for those big eyes of hers.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Yes, but Gunnar Roque isn't so pretty! :P I think you're mixing up your -oques.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Well, not so much an Uglification, since the goal is for interesting, rather than ugly, but something like that. It's the limitation of using only three Maxis sims for genetic variety that has interested me.

Have you ever tried breeding Gunnar with Malcolm? I seem to recall us discussing a sort of All Stars of Maxis ugly before, but I'm not sure if we ever got around to trying it.

[madame-ugly.livejournal.com]

Ooh, a Gunnar/Malcolm breeding? That sounds fun! Now, would you want them to remain male or could there be a gender swap on one of them (I doubt it changes their ugly much). A gender swap makes breeding in CAS a possibility, is all (sometimes I just don't care to do a "real" experiment in a neighborhood).

[needlecream.livejournal.com]

I think your challenge sounds amazing, I bet people would get some really interesting results from that.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I think it'd be a great opportunity to mix up the genes and create some unique looking sims. It probably wouldn't be a contest as much as a free-for-all, now that I've thought about it.

[sillysoraya.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a fun idea! I'd be interested for sure, I like to expeiment and see outcomes from very different facial structures mixed up!
I once started this plan to breed this face one-ish sim with every sim in Pleasantview. I got pretty far, and some of the kids were extremely cute and different. Mortimer Goth makes lovely children, as does Marylena something-or-other and Dina :]

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I'm also very interested in the outcome of breeding many different Maxis sims. I think a project like this could result in some lovely sims for pixel_trade.

I did something like that once with Don Lothario in Pleasantview. Unfortunately, there are a lot of Face Two sims (like Don) in that hood, so a lot of the children end up looking very similar. It was still fun, though. Poor Don probably had about 20 kids in that game! XD

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

I think the attraction to using Oberon is that he was a unique face AND he has the elf ears. Those elf ears are like crack, I tell you. Oh, and don't forget the red hair.

When doing my entry, it was much more fun to use sims that hadn't been used too much.

I found myself breezing past the people using the face one/face two sims. It really felt like every other entry was using Brandi or Cyd. Or some combination of the pretty sims. Many players still have a very narrow perception of what's considered pretty in game. I know I've never considered using face template replacements because there are actually quite a few of the Maxis faces I like.

I'd LOVE to see a Maxis Taste challenge that's similar to this, but gives bonus points for using the less attractive sims. I seriously considered doing a run with Nervous and Sharla Ottomas. :)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Yes, but Puck has those ears and the red hair, also, and he's got light blue eyes and S1, which I'd imagine to be more popular. I'm mostly surprised that they chose him over Puck, who has more classical features, but maybe they just didn't want to age up a teen. Beats me. I think Oberon is very attractive, but I didn't think so many others would agree.

I like that people are thinking that way. Variety is much more fun. I think your sim turned out quite well.

I like a number of the templates, too, and even the less fortunate ones have some redeeming qualities. I'm interested in default templates these days, though, because I already have so many template faces in my game in the various neighborhoods. I get bored with them after a while. I'm still looking for interesting templates.

I guess to make it fair, we'd need to do some sort of polling process to determine which sims are considered the ugliest, if we were going to use a point system in the challenge.

[pixelcurious.livejournal.com]

I thought about using Ripp but didn't because you did. (Also I was using one from each base game neighborhood, and I knew I wanted green, so that narrowed who I could use from Strangetown).

Oberon's nose isn't bad at all. I really like it. Plus it is a lot smaller on female spawn, and he's got a great overall face shape. I think pointy ears are popular as well, so that might be a factor in the frequent choices. But you're right, he's much less conventional, and when the pack is choosing mainly Ajays and Cyds it makes you wonder.

I like your challenge idea. :)

I actually have no idea where Chester Gieke lives, I don't remember ever seeing him except in other peoples' stories!

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Chloe was a good choice. I used her in a little Good Genes side-project that I did entirely in CAS. I'm going to share her when I post my results from the GG for download.

I like Oberon's nose, too, but I did imagine it had mass appeal. The thing about the pointy ears and red hair are that Puck also has them, so i would have figured people would have picked him over Oberon, because he has a more classic beauty. Maybe most people used adults and just didn't bother aging anyone up.

Thanks. If I can work out the rules to make it clearer and more clearly its own thing, I'll probably pass them on the aledstrange for Maxis_taste. I realy don't have the attention span for organizing it myself.

Chester is a bin sim in Bluewater Village. I'm quite fond of that sub-hood, and I've been playing it a lot lately. There are some really interesting faces there. I love the Larsons, for example. And Florence is lovely.

[mae-o-nays.livejournal.com]

One thing that strikes me with most of the attempts so far is that I prefer the second-to-last generation to the last. A lot of the 'interesting' is bred out by the end. The trouble with using Sims like Brandi Broke (face 1) or Lola/Chloe Curious (face two) is that those face presets seem to be incredibly dominant. As much as I love Brandi as a character, she can make some really boring kids.

Breeding the interesting in would be a cool challenge.

[pixelcurious.livejournal.com]

Chloe is much closer to Face 3 than Face 2, and isn't exactly either. Not that it matters, but just sayin'.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Which one is Face Three? I can't think of a townie offhand that has it.

I always thought Lola and Chloe were mostly Face Two, with some tweaking.

[pixelcurious.livejournal.com]

I don't know which townies use 3, but I had Chloe in Body Shop and moved the sliders on both 2 and 3, and she's very close to Face 3 but really quite different from 2. Her eyes are a little bigger than 3, and more slanted, and her mouth is maybe a bit smaller, but her nose/face shape/everything else is pure 3.

Face 2 is more generic pretty in my opinion. More of a heart-shaped face, dainty nose, plumper lower lip. Chloe's actually got a good sized nose for a female sim.

While checking this in Body Shop, it seems like I have somehow gotten a replacement template for Face 1 (and it scares me a little bit!) I'm going to have to check in CAS and see if it shows up there, too. I don't like the idea of replacement templates sneaking into my game. Maybe it's just a weird Body Shop glitch. O_o

[pixelcurious.livejournal.com]

You know what, scratch all of that... Chloe IS mostly Face 2, and something is REALLY wrong with my Body Shop. Face 1 has been bumped up to the second slot; Face 2 to the third slot, and so on. And I have this I-don't-know-what in the Face 1 slot. But in CAS they're correct.

>_>

WTF

!!!

ETA: it's freaking Hilary Duff! Her face template took the Face 1 spot. And she's really scary looking! *laughs nervously*

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Bahaha! Hillary Duff is the new Face One. XD Scary stuff.

What does she look like? Doesn't she have a whole full face makeup that paints her face on for you, too?

[pixelcurious.livejournal.com]

LOL. I feel so embarrassed now with my "Chloe is so not face 2!" thing. She totally is. I just have an effed-up Body Shop.

I guess Hilary could be worse. Yeah, she has the full-face makeup (it's in Costume Makeup). It has Maxis brown eyes so you can't change them, but underneath they're light blue, or maybe gray, I'm not sure (and she has no eyebrows, since they're painted on the mask).





Here's her template usurping the spot of Face 1. Maybe this is why she vanished from the Exchange, while other celebrities remain there? When I'm done with her, I'm going to take her back out (and store her elsewhere in case I want her again).



Another odd thing is her face makeup only appears for S1. Change the skintone to S2 or anything else, and that mask disappears from the Costume Makeup section.

[(Anonymous)]

I had that happen with the Jeanette Biedermann sim. I already deleted the sim itself so I'm not quite sure what's left behind to cause that.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

That's really odd, and troubling, too. It's one thing to show up as a face under the faces category, but another thing entirely to show up as a template.

Could it be the "Sims 3D" package that comes along with a lot of the official content, I wonder? I know the outfits all come with sims that show up in CAS and Bodyshop, so maybe Jeanette came with something like that. Maybe you could re-download her and find the offending file, then seek it out in your downloads folder.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Heheh. Don't be embarrassed. I'm nonstop making a tool of myself around here. Remember the whole Lot Adjuster hate-on incident? :P At least you didn't end up on simsecret (yet). I even manage to get my moronic spelling errors posted on there from time to time. XD

That Hillary thing just smacks of too much creative control to me. I can just imagine her insisting that the player has no way to mess with her look (and don't even THINK about changing her skintone! >:O!!!). I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, but that's where my mind instantly goes.

Though having the template there so the game generates random townies with your face in any number of eye/skin/hair/outfit combos sort of goes against that aim. Imagine Hillary with alien skin, some sort of killer afro, and the Nightlife raver outfit! Heehee.

It reminds me of the Humble thing. I'm sure he make himself an "untouchable" townie to prevent players from messing aorund with him too much. Little did he know... XD (Spoiler: I've even bred him into the Tomato Legacy!)

[pixelcurious.livejournal.com]

Humble is a real person? I did not know! Sims is educational! I am eager to see your humblespawn. :D

My mind went to creative control too, with the face makeup (I accidentally typed "fakeup" -- truth in typos!)

I forgot to mention, that template is only for adult females. Other ages of female get one of the "ugly" townie faces. If I remember right, it's the sort of bug-eyed one with a big nose. Males also get that face. Imagine breeding in a townie all unknowing that his daughters may do a Duff in adulthood. :D Maybe I should leave her in my game...

I saw you mention the 3D file in another comment. Hilary does come with that. She has several files. Three are no doubt the clothes, hair, and face makeup: afbody_Hilary, afhair_Hilary, afface_Hilary. Then there's afarch_Hilary, which I worked out is probably archetype, since I read that term on MATY. And there's Hilary_3D and HilarySim. I'm assuming either the archetype or the 3D is the face template, but I don't know which one till I experiment with taking one out.

All around, it's such a weird way of putting a sim together for download. I can totally see the real Duff saying "Don't let them cross me with ugly sims, don't let them make me black..." I don't know a thing about her but it's where my mind goes!

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Are the Face Ones and Twos more dominant? That's a shame. I always thought that those more removed from the templates, via sliders, were more dominant. There's so many conflicting views on this, I'm beginning to think there's no truth to it and things are completely random. This challenge would support that norion.

Then again, there is that category of dominant traits in SimPE... maybe that's what determines it, and it's different from sim to sim, and would explain why Brandi is often dominant (you're not thinking of her first child, right? He's always a clone).

I think so. It would also allow for people to aim for something besides pretty, if they want to. Attractiveness is so subjective, afterall.

[mae-o-nays.livejournal.com]

Dominant is probably the wrong word (you wouldn't think I studied English lit...), but they really water down more interesting genetics. Really extreme genetics do dominate, but I've had trouble keeping medium-weird faces in the family gene pool. I'm going mostly on my own game, though, so I think you've got a point about it being random.

I've made Brandi have babies with a few Sims - with Remington the man-maid, the kids were a good mix of the two parents. Her babies with Darren Dreamer looked a lot like her, and Darren's lovely wide nose didn't get passed on. He actually makes really interesting kids with Cassandra Goth. But like you said, it's all subjective :)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Okay, I see what you were saying now. I agree. Combining two parents that are sort of "middle of the road" often ends up more interesting than really extreme combined with a more basic and pretty template.

I've had some nice kids from Cass and Darren, too. I love his wide nose! It's such a rarity among the Maxis premades and I do have a soft spot for wide and generally bigger noses. (My SO has a very proud proboscis, in fact. :P)

[honorkid54.livejournal.com]

I tried to use sims that nobody had used. In the end, I ended up using Puck, Benedick Monty and Ophelia.

One of the choices that did surprise me was Dina Caliente. Her features are a little bit odd, but on the resulting child her face actually provided some pretty nice genes. Someone did use Malcolm Landgraab, and the resulting child wasn't bad looking at all.

[naughtydolphin.livejournal.com]

I did that! His eyebrows turned up in a few of the gen three kids quite strongly, but his features were quite interesting.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I think Puck was used a couple of times (surprisingly much less than Oberon, though), but Ophelia and Benedick weren't used at all (I used Ophelia, but that's it). Ophelia has really nice genes. Her sons are quite masculine and she has those sort of slanted eyes (a little like Nervous). That Marsha Bruenig template is one of my favourites.

I'm surprised by the Caliente sisters, too. They're not really all that great looking, in my opinion. Nina has a HUGE forehead, Dina has a sort of long face (especially the nose), and both have smallish eyes. I think you can see a nod towards their alien heritage in their strong cheekbones and tapering jaws (and the forehead thing — the default PT has a massive one).

That said, I've seen their genes breed well with others, so they're a good bet. And they're certainly NOT ugly.

Malcolm was a brave choice, I agree, and she was wise to use him in the first breeding round, to give the brow a chance to breed out. I'm sure even Malcolm probably has some nice features in there among the sketchy ones. It's all a question of balance.

[drankmywar.livejournal.com]

To be honest I don't think that winners are going to be just based on the end result, photo quality/photo editing usually comes into play as well. I guess it's not fair, but presentation goes a long way.

I'm still trying to get mine done, but Sy decides to crash my game every time I try to select her, so I'm not sure if I'll even be able to.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you're right about the final result photos playing a large part in who gets voted for. That's one of the reasons I decided to use slightly more realistic cc for my entry pics (that, and I really do like them, but they're not quite my style).

I'm sorry to hear that. Maybe you could try breeding with her using SimPE instead. Have the Maxis sim carry the baby...

[drankmywar.livejournal.com]

Imogen is adorable, I think she turned out lovely :D

TY, I finally got her to work. I'm not sure why she kept crashing it.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I just saw your submission for the contest and colour me impressed! I just adore Meadow. He has that pretty/ugly thing going on (with the big ears) that ends up being better than just plain pretty. I love that you used Chester and Mickey (who's also not so pretty) and then cleaned up with Stella, who's enough of a tweaked version of Face One that I don't consider her boring at all. Fabulous results! I'm rooting for you to win, my dear. ^_^

Have you uploaded him anywhere to share? I'd really love to have him in my game.

[drankmywar.livejournal.com]

Aww thank you so much! I really like the odd/pretty faces, so Mickey's one of my favs. I just realized that Meadow also got Mickey's chubby neck/chin area :D

I have him extracted, I just need to clone and package him up :)

[(Anonymous)]

I think Ripp was used one more time.
I was suprised by the amount of people that used Oberon too, someone even used PT9!

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Nah, he wasn't, actually. Someone used Tank, but labelled him in the family tree as Ripp. Of this, I am about 99.99% sure.

The Oberons really do surprise me, but it was madame_ugly who used P.T. No. 9, so I don't think that really counts. ;)