Genetics and Visual Features Inheritance in Paralives
Happy Friday, Anna here!
Today I am going to talk about the genetics system in Paralives, something we started working on a long time ago (back in 2020… time goes by so fast!). I’ve been revisiting the whole system recently to make it work with all the updates to the Paramaker that have been implemented since, and to integrate it into the pregnancy gameplay. A perfect opportunity to show you how it holds up in action!
🧬 Different Types of Inherited Traits
In real life, our physical appearance is influenced by the genes we get from our parents and lots of environmental factors. Don’t worry if you don’t remember your biology class about dominant and recessive genes, there won’t be a test!
Our main challenge in Paralives was to create a system that lets the player recognize certain traits passed down through their generations of Paras somewhat realistically, without diving into overly complex genetic rules. We wanted things to feel believable, with some fun details (for those of you who do remember Punnett squares 👀) while keeping the system lightweight and consistent with character customization.
We use different inheritance rules depending on the type of trait, and we’re focusing solely on visual aspects here. Let’s go through them!
1. Facial Features: Straight From One of the Parents
Our goals with facial features inheritance are quite simple and definitely not nearly as complex as real-world genetics. We essentially want the player to be able to recognize that “They have their mother’s nose!” or “They have their dad’s jawline!”.
How it works:
For each facial feature (like the nose, chin, etc.), the child inherits all the relevant sliders from one parent, chosen randomly. For example, they might inherit their entire set of nose sliders from their mom, and the cheeks from their dad. This helps keep things coherent and avoids weird mixes of incompatible sliders, which can quickly lead to ugly or extreme results.
Here is our favourite couple from the trailer video and the two children we created from them with the genetics tools of the Paramaker. Aren’t they cute?
2. Height: Partly From The Parents, Mostly Up to Chance
As you know, changing the height of the characters is central to Paralives, and we’ve been trying to make this happen since the very beginning of the development. Having this possibility of different heights adds a lot of uniqueness to characters and makes the world feel more diverse and alive. Our goal for the genetics part of height is not only to get this idea of height being inherited, but also to add some variation to it so that children of the same parents don’t necessarily have the same height. We want the player to say things like “This family has giant genes running in it!” or “This child grew to be taller than both their parents!”. Waiting for kids to grow before knowing which one is going to be the tallest of the family is a nice little detail that this system makes possible!
How it works:
We split heights into three categories: short, medium, and tall, with different ranges depending on the Para’s sex (resembling real-life statistics). When generating a child’s height, we randomly pick one parent’s category and apply it to the child. Then we randomize the exact value within that range. That means your Para might be “tall like his mom”, even if they’re not exactly the same height.
The big brother is already taller than everyone!
Note: In the Paramaker, you can make a genetic child from two same-sex parents, but during gameplay, the parental couple will always consist of one para that can get pregnant and one para that can get others pregnant (you can edit these per character in the Paramaker).
3. Eye Color, Skin Color, Hair Color and Texture, Freckles: Your Textbook Dominant and Recessive Genes
For those traits, instead of getting the direct value from one of the parents, we wanted to build a more complex genetics system that reflects simplified dominant/recessive models that are already documented in real life. These are the only traits that are able to “skip a generation”!
How it works:
We built a simple system of genes and alleles to simulate how these features are passed down. Some traits are dominant, meaning they only need one copy of the gene (allele) to appear (like brown eyes). Others are recessive, which means they need two matching alleles to show up (like blue eyes). I already talked a little about the two-gene model for eye color in this very old post, but here is another example that we implemented for hair texture.
There’s one gene for hair texture, and it can have four possible alleles: straight, wavy, curly, or coily; with coily being the most dominant, and straight the most recessive. In other words, the more curls you have, the more likely the trait is to "win" when mixed. Let’s say a Para gets one curly allele from their mom and one wavy allele from their dad. Since curly is more dominant than wavy, the Para will have one of our curly hairstyles, chosen at random. But the wavy gene is still there, and it could show up again in their child, if paired with another recessive allele!
In this example, the mother’s hair is coily and the father’s hair is straight. In genetics terms, the dad has to have (Straight/Straight) alleles, since straight hair is never dominant. Since the kid has curly hair, it means his mom has (Coily/Curly) alleles and he has (Curly/Straight) alleles. 🤓☝️ One curly grandpa or grandma would have been very proud!
👩💻 Application of the Genetics System
We use the genetics system in several different situations:
When creating a Para from scratch in the Paramaker: The game analyzes their current features and deduces the genome data corresponding to the actual look of the character. If the character has “unnatural” traits (like pink eyes or green skin), their genetic data is randomly assigned.
When creating a Para from two parents: Whether you’re in the Paramaker or Live mode gameplay (by getting pregnant), the game generates a child by following the inheritance rules we’ve explained above, from the genetics data of the two parents.
When adding a parent or sibling in the Paramaker: The system uses existing genetic data to generate the new family member so that everything fits together nicely.
Not implemented yet (but might be an update in the future): An advanced genetics interface for all the geeky players out there wanting to control their Para’s genetics themselves.
🍼 Note: Babies and toddlers don’t have access to full sliders, so their features might look a bit generic at first. But don’t worry, their genetic data is still computed and saved, and once they grow up, they should reveal their true heritage!
Here is the updated look of the interface for creating characters with genetics! Note that right now, only two options are available (Create Child, Create Twin), but there should be more soon (Create Parent, Create Sibling). You can choose the sex and the life stage of the child you want to randomize.
🛠️ Hacking Your Para’s DNA With the Mod System
As with most of our in-game systems, genetics are widely moddable. You can add, remove, or modify any trait category that supports genetic inheritance, set up the sliders you want inherited (or not), and more.
Some examples of applications could be:
Create a new alien species with green and grey skin tones (with green as the dominant color)
Make “unnatural” colors (like bright pink eyes or blue skin) inheritable
Add new accessories, like devil horns or Shrek ears, and make them inheritable too (pretty sure Shrek ears would be a dominant trait, in my scientific opinion)
Do you have any other ideas for genetic traits that you would like to mod in Paralives? 👀 I’d be happy to hear them!
There are many little details we are still working on to make the most believable and good-looking children Paras, but I hope you enjoyed this little tour of the genetics system to date!
That’s it for me!
Have a wonderful weekend,
Anna
Edit - January 8th, 2026: This post is now public, feel free to share it!
Comments (129)
I love the genetic part from both parents; something I will really dev into! You have made things in this game I have only got from mods before and I am so excited for the countdown of early release! So Paras, until tomorrow!!
are there plans for vitiligo in the paramaker?
The only genetics-related thing I'm hoping for that's not mentioned at all in this post is hand-dominance. Whether a child para is left or right handed being random but heavily influenced by parents' handedness
I appreciate that things like the skin colour for interracial couples isn't only the midway point between the two parents. It seems like biracial paras are actually able to inherit very dark or pasty white skin too? Really cool if so! One thing I do hope the system is able to do is to look at things like: 1. at least one parent has blonde gene + 2. at least one parent has redhead gene = child para has chance to have Strawberry Blonde hair, even though neither of the parents had that specific hair colour. I also REALLY appreciate you mentioning modding at the end. So we'll be able to EASILY mod in inheritable rainbow anime hair colours AND make new inheritable species/lifestate/fantasy race traits like ears and tails. Really really awesome!
With Nraas (Sims 3) you could control how much of an effect Grandparents and parents held on the appearance of children. Would be cool if people could mod that in here. So a huge nose has a change to skip a generation. But as it is this makes a lot of sense and should be soild
As controversial as the sims 4 genetics system has been, for me one of the things I had liked about it was that it did not strictly only follow the parents genes, it was a gamble of how much they looked like their parents which felt slightly realistic to me as in real life people can inherent genetic traits from all there past relatives and it gave more personality to each individual child
Por favor, por favor, por favor nos possibilite adicionar caudas felpudas e orelhas aos Parafolks pra criar um Para demi-humano, tipo Raphtalia!! 🥺😬😶🌫️
It's not clear from the post, but I hope you can get a mix of parents skin, hair and maybe eye color. My dad has black hair and brown eyes and my mom blonde hair and blue eyes and my siblings and I all have brown hair (of varying shades) and hazel green eyes. All of our skin is in between too. I would also love to see a brunette para and a redheaded para have a kid with auburn hair, or blonde/red for strawberry blonde!
I don't know if this will be included but making the skin details (i.e. vitiligo, freckles, birthmarks) inheritable is a must. So many games leave this out and it breaks up the gameplay. If it is not automatically included, hopefully with the mod tool we will be able to. add it.
I have no words other than LOVE IT
This all sounds super cool and exciting! I did want to clarify something though. It says "If the character has “unnatural” traits (like pink eyes or green skin), their genetic data is randomly assigned." Does this mean, for example, if I create a Para with purple skin and pink hair, the game will randomly decide if these traits should be considered dominant or recessive, but that they could still pass them onto their offspring? Or does this mean that they will receive randomly assigned "real" genetics that differ from their displayed traits, like their skin genome will be considered "dark" and their hair genome will be considered "blonde" for example? Meaning their offspring can't inherit their "unnatural" traits? I would hope when we eventually get the option to edit their genetics ourselves we can decide whether or not we want these "unnatural" traits to be heritable. I like playing with fantasy creature characters so it would be nice if I could have a whole family of pink and purple babies.
I think it means it will be heritable but the dominance is random. If you click on the link for their old genetics post, it says you can unlink traits. For instance, if the character has pink hair, it can be treated as dyed hair and not a genetic hair colour if you unlink it. I'm not sure if this is just for hair, or if it's for all features.
This is SO sick. I can't wait!!!
Really love thus write up! Sounds very similar to TS2 but with more variety. I know this is post is a month old, but I have a question: when creating a new para from scratch, will genes always but homozygous? For example, if you create a para with coily hair, will the alleles always be coily/coily, or can the game generate a gene like coily/wavy?
This system looks very, very cool!
The little girls appear to have developed chests? Is this something that will be changing? Do children have different clothing options than adults?
I'd like to note that in real life people actually can have pink, red, and purple eyes, and that such are genetically inheritable. These eye colors are displayed in people with albinism. Though I recognize that y'all probably have a lot of work on your hands right now, and this is hardly a top priority, it could be nice to add a natural eye color system for these traits.
thats a good note, i think the same as you
I love that you’re putting attention where it’s needed and being efficient with resources where it makes the most sense too. It’s so clear you’re players and this game is a product of love and it really shows with every system you showcase
I just have this euphoria feeling of how incredible it felt to create a sim for the first time but this will be that x a million. To me the height implementation is really amazing. I just really can’t wait
This sounds so cool!
Ce système de génétique est intelligent, efficace et tout simplement magnifique !! Bravo à toute l'équipe c'est du beau travail !! Je suis impressionnée par la ressemblance des enfants avec leurs parents, c'est une superbe idée de mixer les traits de cette manière et le fonctionnement des tailles, de la texture des cheveux, tout est super bien pensé ! C'est un réel plaisir de voir ce que des personnes alliant intelligence et créativité réussissent à créer ♥ BRAVO
Cool idea to have the hair texture also be genetic! That way I won't have to manually "force" a black sim to only use curly/coily hairstyles and vice versa, just to make it fit into realistic gameplay.
This! I am so excited for this too!
OMG!!! i am so excited about this!! im such a genetics nerd and would love a system to be able to play around with my para’s genetics!!! keep up the good work 🩵
I am completely in awe. HOW COOL IS THIS?! I have been absolutely blown away by the development of this game and I am so so so excited to play.
this is something I was curious about, and I'm super happy to hear about the process!! I absolutely love genetics and knowing that you guys put this much effort into it makes me really happy
Do you have a plan to allow players to create gender non-conforming, trans, and intersex people?
As I understand the concept of gender in Paralives, the characters don't have a real gender. You can choose whether they have breasts, whether they can get pregnant or impregnate others, etc. In that sense, it's a human being who has no gender at all, and we have to breathe life into it and give it a personality. So, wouldn't this mean exactly what you wrote/what you want, or have I misunderstood it?
I’m curious about recessive genes - you mentioned that if one parent has brown eyes & the other blue, their kids will have the dominant gene (brown eyes). Is there ever a small chance for the recessive gene to pop up in one of the immediate children? Or would that only potentially happen in the next generation?
I hope they add a randomized chance of a recessive gene "winning" or randomly appearing like mutations. But it should be a tiny percentage to not break the genetics. Too big a chance would make it look like there are no generics at play at all.
Can't wait to see how animal genetic system will look because there is big communities for Horse genetics and games about it ;)
Honestly, I just hope it’s there at all, because in «you-know-what 4» it’s basically non-existent — only body shape and the exact picked coat color get passed down, no mixing from parents, and anything you painted yourself doesn’t carry over either.
This is just awesome! I love how genetics work in the game and can't wait to be amazed when my future parafolks show their granma/grandpa recessive features 💚
I am sooooo excited for this!
Will same sex paras be able to have children together or is there an option for them to adopt?
They mentioned in the post about same sex Paras being able to have children together!
oh, this is so cool & what I've been looking for!! And what a lovely explanation of how genetics will work in game, I'm STOKED!! I'm also totally looking forward to seeing the different heights of Paras throughout the town as well...*le sigh* 4 months, guys🥹🌇
Haven’t seen this comment yet, but since height was discussed, could you develop similar systems for bust and hips, and feet and hand sizes? For example, I inherited my paternal grandmother’s small feet and hands but my maternal grandmother’s large bust and wide hips. Meanwhile my sister inherited my mother’s larger feet and hands, but my paternal grandmother’s petite bust and hips. It could be like heights where it’s mostly chance based and varies by gender expression but is also somewhat inherited. Also (maybe in a far flung future update) if paras could need glasses after a certain age and there could be a genetic component to needing to wear glasses? If not I’ll just do what I do in sims 2 and roll to see if they “need” glasses and add to the percentage chance if their parents needed glasses as a toddler, child, or teen. Just an idea to put out there!
Love the needing glasses thing!! It could happen at various ages, and could either be for short sightedness and worn all the time, or far sightedness, so worn to read and for computer work. Some would need glasses, but not everyone, just like real life. And that could be inheritable too! I hope they could implement that at some stage, so that glasses wearing is realistic, and adds another dimension and surprise to gameplay. We could have an optometrist, just like a doctor or dentist in the game that might need to be visited if a Para is having difficulty seeing at school, or if their eyes deteriorate in old age. They could get their eyes tested, then choose glasses in the shop. And for those who don't want their Para to be forced to wear glasses, they can opt for contact lenses, which doesn't change the appearence of their Para at all. :-)
I remember Punnett squares from high school bio and it's when my interest in DNA began. I've been waiting on a genetics post and I am loving the way genetics will be handled in game, just complex enough and easy to understand. I love seeing how generics are passed down in life sim games. Can't wait to see it in action in game!
Oh! this is a great opportunity for me to ask directly, will anything resembling intersex be in the game??
I think the genetics was handled just right. Enough complexity to not be too much of the same (hopefully, anyway), but not so complex that we should all be able to understand it. This was one subject I was waiting on! I also love that things can skip generations or everyone won’t be the same height just because. I can’t wait to play around with it in game. Great job!
The paralives genetics system exceeds my hopes & expectations; and I like that only appearance is passed down, allowing paras' children to have drastically different personalities from them, if players chose. This was a very exciting update, thank you! ❤️
Amazing ✨
Isso está INCRÍVEL!!!
My question is if a Para is born with a natural hair color like Brown/Black/Blonde/Red etc but let's say "dyes" it when they get older to another color (natural or not), does the game remember the original hair color? It would be cool if the para retains the genes that were given to them at birth and that "dyeing" their hair wouldn't impact inheritance with future kids.
Good question
I'm beyond pleased to know genes and traits will reflect generational attributes! I took after my Dad's side with brown straight hair and brown eyes while my sister took after my mother's side with blonde wavy hair and blue eyes and taller than me. The way people know we're related is by inherent facial expressions, gestures, and some similar traits. Great work, Devs! ✨️
Kinda sad to hear that unnatural eye colours aren't gonna be inheritable (if I got that right). Also confused that if a brown-eyed and green-eyed para have children, the brown gets always (?) passed down? I get that some stuff is made how it's made because of reality, but this basically means you have to give your paras this or that colour to get them down the line somehow. Idk. Overall, I like what you guys planned and created, but I'm not into modding and don't like to download mods either.. so what the game has is what I have to deal with.
The brown wouldn't always be passed down, it would just be the most likely result. If you had a green-eyed para and a brown-eyed para with recessive green gene (from one of their parents having green eyes), the resulting child could have green eyes. I think a 25% chance of green and a 75% chance of brown in this example. Two brown-eyed paras could even have a green-eyed child if they both had inherited green recessive gene and passed it down to their child.
I'm a genetics nerd so being able to mod them to create 'realistic fantasy' genes sounds right up my ally- so grateful! Hoping the animals will (eventually) get the same treatment : )
I would love an advanced genetics interface, hopefully it is added!
I’m still trying to figure out how same-sex couples can have children in live mode — will this not be possible in the initial EA release?
This isn’t an EA game. It’s an independent company.
Sounds great!
I love that hair texture and freckles and height are able to be inherited! Great job on the genetics system! Would modders be able to tag cc hair that they make with coily/curly/wavy/straight so that it is inherited genetically?
Thank you so much! These are some exciting news, I love playing with genetics and see how my favourite couple's children turn out :) yay!
i was disappointed when i read that unnatural traits wouldnt be inheritable, but if i can easily change that then i have no problems!! i love the simplified genetics system u guys made, i cant wait to play around with it
Bravo Anna! This is such a well done post, and an amazing system 👏 As a biologist myself, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that this feels like it was written by someone with a little more familiarity than just internet research on genetics to their name. Any biology background amongst the team, haaha? If not, then great job researching :)
I love all of it 🥰 now you only talked bout the face and hight features but what's with the body? And I think it would be cool if one Para has brown eyes and the other blue eyes if there is a chance for the child to have grey or green eyes.
And how this works with skin color?
I'm amazed with the fact that male parafolks just CAN inherit their mother's traits without appearing they've had plastic surgery or are half-aliens, not resembling her at all! This is the biggest advantage of a universal 3D model and a convenient art direction, and I love it so much!! Thanks guys for the hard work 🙏
It all sounds amazing. I love it when my characters in other games (cough cough) have children, I love seeing who they look like and who they take after. 122 days until early access. Not that I'm counting obvs 😁
I literally have a countdown widget on my phone counting down the days 😆
i believe you've talked about this before but i can't find it 🫣 what is the situation regarding gender/sex in the current state of the game? i know you've said that none of the cosmetics like body hair, clothes, etc. are locked to masculine or feminine framed paras, but open to all. what about physical characteristics like breasts? will there be pronouns in the game and can we edit/customise them? are there ways to create intersex/ trans/ non-binary/ etc. characters? either way, i'm really excited what the modders are going to come up with in this regard <3
fyi the only thing i found was on the roadmap, in the "in progress" section: "select the gender and pronouns of your character", which doesn't tell us about the actual options and whether or not they're customisable
THIS IS INCREDIBLE OH MY GOSH, this is so exciting from both a gameplay and science perspective!!
Regarding pregnancy, will the sex and genetics of the baby be determined at the time of birth or at the time of conception (or the game registering this Para is pregnant)? If I end up reloading the game to before the baby is born, will I still end up with the same baby Para?
Hmm... interesting question... Will we have people reloading and reloading after births to get different genetics or not... :-)
One of my favorite parts of playing life sims is having my characters have children and seeing what they turn out to be like. This makes me so excited😭
First of all, I just want to say that the Genetics feature is amazing, everything is so detailed and realistic! It's going to be so much fun to explore. I do have a question about the different age groups in the game. From what I understand, we currently have: baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, adult, and elder. But I was wondering, could there be an age group between child and teen, like a pre-teen? I remember that in a previous update, you talk about the different age group, and I was hoping to know more.
I believe it's: baby, toddler, child, pre-teen, teen, adult, and elder. Young adult hasn't been confirmed.
This is really cool. I'm glad that it seems like it'll be accessible to add supernatural/occults to the genetic system. I hope, even if the Paralives team doesn't have an intention to add occults, that they'll still continue to keep them in mind while developing the modding tools. I was wondering, I assume it would be possible but if I wanted to change it with the modding tools so that facial features aren't fully copied straight from a parent (like add a slight bit of randomness) I could do that?
hnng why can't December arrive sooner
Ohmygod, recessive genes!!! 💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜
Looking forward to trying the modding system! Sounds like it can unleash a lot of creativity ✨
Really happy with this!
Would something like the Para's weight be heritable as well with this genetics system?
It is not right now!
This is super super cool!! Thank you for blending realism with fun, I ca t wait to see what combinations I can make
All of this sounds good. Plus, it's exciting to know there will be some supernatural elements to this game. Had no idea there would be aliens too
No, sorry if that was not clear! I was talking about mod ideas that you could make with this system, but there's no alien in the game :)
Thank you for sharing! From what it sounds like, you could pretty easily make occult paras with the modding system, which is pretty exciting for some! I have a question. With the mod system, would you be able to make new animations and paramaker items etc through it, in the game itself, or would you need an external program like Blender to do all that but the paralives modding tools makes it easier to implement?
You still need a program like Blender to make your custom models and animations. The modding tools just make you able to integrate it in the game with your custom interactions and so on :)
Very interesting! It will be interesting to test it in the game ^^ And what about heterochromia? How will it be inherited? (in real life it is so rare) :000
It is not part of the genetics system, at least yet!
Seeee now I'm In Love I can't wait to play with the Genetic System 😳💕
Holy moly this is exciting! As others have said, I think this is a wonderful system you all have come up with. It feels (to me) complex enough to breathe life into the gameplay and is well thought out. Great work as always!
I love how you mentioned that the modding tools are able to add onto this genetic system. That is something that has always bothered me as someone who makes fantasy characters. Though I wonder if you make it where the hunger need could effect the height. Typically in real life if you don't get the nutrients needed growing up you don't grow as tall. I was thinking that if an infant to teen's hunger need is constantly being to low that it could effect their physical development to being smaller then their family members.
I'm sorry, but that's one thing I don't want to see in this game - starving Paras to affect height.
Oh my gosh, yes please to the advanced genetics interface, that would be so cool! It would be so fun for a legacy game to define some dominant traits of the starter para to give greater chances of some individual characteristics being passed down. I also love that we'll be able to mod the heritability of unnatural colors as well since sometimes it's fun to have a blue-haired family. Also, how do the genetics work with modifying the para's appearance mid-game? If my para is genetically a brunette but I give her pink hair at some point, does she remain genetically brunette?
Yes she will remain genetically brunette!
I love to play demon/tiefling/dragonfolk inspired characters, and this basically allows to create those. Are "lifespans" inheritable? That would make it even easier to create distinct "fantasy races". Maybe certain characteristics could be included as well, so if one was to make for example an "ADHD" gene it could get passed down as well.
Lifespans, or more generally, non visual traits, cannot be passed down in our system right now!
Hi Anna, I wanted to ask if you've considered making a para's genetics (not including traits etc) available as a DNA string that can be copy-pasted. Crusader Kings 3 has this feature of generating the DNA string or pasting one in, and it's a great way to quickly share the appearance of your character with someone else without sharing the full character on the workshop. (and it has spawned hilarious communities like https://www.reddit.com/r/CKTinder/ )
Haha! The genetics information will be saved on the character so you could get it from the character files if you want :)
I'm doing a happy dance! I'm so happy the genetics is here! Love that you did height and hair as well. This is from someone who got the worst hair in the family, love that my paras will know my pain 😆.
i love the idea of dominant and recessive genes, but in terms of skin, hair, and eyes, i do worry about paras looking too similar over time and lacking genetic diversity. if i have a para with brown eyes and dark coily hair who has kids with a green-eyed straight-haired blond, i would still want to see some mix of those features if those paras had multiple kids. maybe there could be some small chance that a recessive gene is chosen over a dominant one for a new baby. i think back to the sims 2's dominant/recessive genes, where after like three generations your entire town could have black hair and brown eyes.
The Sims 2's dominance/recessive system doesn't really save the genetics information if I remember correctly. In Paralives, a character with dominant trait can still have recessive genetics, so a child won't always get brown hair if the parents hair are brown and blond!
I’m so amazed! You brought into the next level TS2 genetic system and of course with your own twist, I couldn’t be happier! You are so talented!
It sounds great! I love seeing characters have a family resemblance so this post is very exciting. I just have two questions: 1) Would it be possible to change a character's physical traits (such as hair colour/ type) without changing their genes? So for example, let's say my para has brown curly hair. Could my para dye their hair blonde and straighten it, without permanently changing their genetics? So their child would still have a chance of inheriting my para's original brown curly hair, not their new blonde straight hair. 2) I love the way you are working out height, and the way you randomise the value within a certain range. I also really like that paras will inherit certain facial feature sliders from one parent only, preventing bizarre features 😂. I was just wondering would it be possible to add in (or mod) slight variety in inherited facial features? So instead of the child always inheriting their mother's nose slider values exactly, they might inherit their mother's nose slider values +/-1. I'm not entirely sure how to explain this clearly but here goes 😅😂 say the mother has the following slider values for their nose: Nose length: 4 Nose width: 6 Nose curve: 2. The child would have a chance of inheriting a slight variation of this: Nose length: 4 +/-1 Nose width: 6 +/-1 Nose curve: 2 +/- 1 It seems to me that this would prevent a weird mix of slider values, while adding in a bit of realistic variety. I hope that makes sense! Would something like that be possible?
1) yes! genetics should only be save after creating your Para for the first time (or at birth), so if you change your hair after that, that won't be counted in your genetics. Your children Paras will be made from the original genetics 2) Yes you can, it's actually a system I tested out to generate more variation! However it did not go so well haha! Even slight variations to the values can cause very weird results to the sliders... Maybe if only a few of those sliders would change, that could work better, but it would need more tests on our part, so we'll see!
I’m so excited to see how genetics shape up!!!! This is a great system so far!!
This is SO cool! As someone who still plays The Sims 2 over any other Sims game because of the genetics system, I'm really delighted by this and just how MANY aspects of appearance are inheritable - like hair texture and skin details!!!! - and how moddable this is! Part of the fun of life sims for me is being able to play a family for generations and seeing how they change over time based on genetics and to have such a wide array of affected traits has me SO excited!!!! I'm also really keen on the choices re: facial features to help limit really extreme changes that don't mesh. Ooohh I'm looking forward to trying this out in game myself when this goes EA!! (BTW it looks like you used the same caption twice on two different images - the one about "our favorite family from the trailer")
Thank you for noticing, I edited it!
One thing I would like to see coded into the game in terms of how genetics affect our para's looks would be the dimples on the chin and on the lower back. And also the body type as well, because you mentioned height but not the actual body shape.
This is awesome so far! Recessive genes do sometimes win over dominant ones even though there is only one allele, but I understand that it isn't possible.
I think this system is really neat, it makes genetics visible, but still remains pretty simple
this system is so well thought out. really impressive and exciting!
Amazing post, it’s actually mind blowing how in-depth the genetics system is! Will there be a “Create Parent” option in the future as well? Something that would take several features from the child para and randomly generate the rest 🤔
In the caption under the image in the creating a child section, it said they will work on that option in the future!
As someone who was *this* close to going into genetic counseling this is so exciting to see! I am curious to know how genetics works in live mode when you decide you para doesn't like their natural hair. For example, what if my para was born with straight hair, but part of their story is that they go and get it permed to be more curly. Will the hair at the time of pregnancy or birth be what gets passed down to their kid, or is their natural hair gene saved in their code and that's what get passed down?
This is a great question! If I ""dye"" my paras hair, is it now considered a part of their genetics, or do they carry their genes from birth?
Yay! Genetics! I really like how you broke it down and created a system that is both relatively simple but provides variety. It's a really important element of a family focused life sim and I do love seeing traits passed all the way from grandparents. When I play my Sims, I tend to take pictures for a family tree and I like to look at which traits carry through generations. The modding aspect is very cool too! I appreciate that you're making it easy for us to customize and create the kind of worlds we want to play.
All of this sounds freaking cool! I absolutely love playing with genetics in my family gameplays. Love the fact that genes can pass through generations and that there's logical real life genetics rules 😍 Make time past faster pls! I wanna play Haha
Oh! I love the idea of "crate parents" in the paramaker! I do love making big families and then sending each to a part of the map to make it feel more "alive". Also, I think there's a mistake in the text. The part about heights was doubled. It's fine, I would also want to talk twice about such a cool feature 😅
Thank you for noticing, I've edited it out!
This is so cool! I love that although they are unique you can instantly see features from both the parents in the children.
I don't really get it with first pic, why is their daughter have yellow skin? Both parents have more red/pink skin, not so bright, where did yellow come from?😵💫
For skin color, genetics only deal with the "brightness" part (how light or dark it is) and assign a random skin color among the premade swatches for this brightness value. So this is why the hue of the skin color might not be exactly the same
Wait you changed the ranges of height depending on the sex and not the likelihood?? So would that mean you cant have a tall woman bc the only option is "relatively" tall?
For now, yes. However sex traits needs more work and there's already a likelihood system that I tried out for the other slider parts, so it could take likelihood into account in the future :)
WOOOOO!! 🧬
Awesome 👌
Love this update! As someone who recently graduated with a biology degree this resonates with me. Question about genetics though, when playing a legacy family will there be a small chance of a trait (phenotypic or genotype) to erupt on a child that is from a very distant ancestor para? I hope to see more advanced genetics in the future, negative, neutral and positive, x-linked and autosomal, or even co-dominance or incomplete dominance genetics!
It could be very distant yes, a recessive gene could be passed on through generations without being seen!
All of them have great jeans 😍
GENETICS FINALLY YEEEEEEEAHHHHHHH!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉