So why then has it never done so for me?

just wondering, but I never did any of the things mentioned to prevent it so it should've hapened, but it didn't I still end up with different kids...

At the beginning, I never had this problem, but as time went on, no matter what I did, my children always looked the same with similar or exact personality traits. It was extremely annoying. I tried people with unique facial features and that didn't work! I used MATY debugger but didn't get the chance to see if it worked since my game started to act crazy with my new graphics card.

Axe - Then you didn't notice, or you had more than one child per play session. If you actually go in and test it as I did you'll see it does happen that way.

Load the game with two existing sims on a lot - I used Oberon and Titania from Veronaville for my test as they were an adult male and female already living on a lot. Impregnate one by the other and have the pregnant sim give birth. Save, exit the game.

Repeat twice more, loading the same lot with the two sims that have already had one kid. Once the third child is born, age all three babies up to adult.

Look at their personalities and faces. They will be identical - males and females will look slightly different due to the variance that happens with age switching, but their skintones, hair colour, and eye colour will be the same.

This whole thing is waaaay easier with the InSIMenator, so you can impregnate, instant birth, etc., without much fuss.

I was unaware of this problem (though it explains a lot about my legacy family)

Do you have to roll during the same session she has her second child or any session in between as long as it's saved?

This is definately true about the personality. I also thought I noticed the appearances always being the same, but I didn´t do any real testing. I just got the lot debugger and randomised every time a couple had more than one child.

However I remember Pescado stating, that the first-born effect was only affecting the personality not the appearance. I found what I read back then here:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...hp?topic=3827.0
and here:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...x.php?topic=3.0
(I hope it´s okay to link to a MATY thread here)

As I was breeding two sims, who were basically maxis facetemplates kind of close in appearances by themselves, I had put into the game, I wrote the very similar appearance off to homogenous genetics. But I am curious now. This thread is very old, but I couldn´t find anything stating anything different. Also it is very easy to determine if the personality is indeed identical, whereas I found it hard to make sure my sims actually were completely identical appearance-wise and not just very, very similar looking.

Another thing about people not noticing this. I read in another thread, that the randomizer is also triggered, if the game already created an NPC in that particular play session. As you don´t always realise, that your game just created an NPC, it could be that people didn´t notice this by just playing the game, because some NPC or townie was created.

Okay... I want to be sure I have this correctly.
If I have say Don L. and Nina C. in Pleasantville have a child. Save/Exit.
Go into CAS... roll pacifier/dice?...
Go back to Don and Nina and have another child, the child will not be identical to the first because I rolled the pacifer/dice.

If I had not rolled the dice I would have had an identical child.

I think I've got it, but I'm not 100%. I don't have many children in the game I'm usually too busy downloading and decorating. LOL

I used to ALWAYS have the same baby whenever I exited, but since Seasons the babies are completely different.

One parent was pale white, one was dark tan. The first child was born very white. I exited, a few days later, had another child, and he was dark tan. Whenever I save before the birth and exit, each time I reenter the lot the baby changes. The only thing different that I did since installing Seasons is download the director's cut package of about 50 hacks from MATY. I don't know if that did something or what. Their personalities are different, too, but just slightly.

chinchilla girl, my understanding is that it applies to total gameplay session. Such as, if Sim1 and Sim2 have child1, save and completely exit game, then enter game and have child2, child2 will be identical to child1 without 'rolling pacifer.'

I'm rather confused by this topic. I know you guys say it always happens, but I don't really think that it has happened to me. Of course, I haven't paid much attention to personality traits, but I would have noticed if my sims were identical. My self-sim has something like ten kids, some of which were created in the same play session and some of which were not. They're mostly all adults as I'm now an elder (and knocking on death's door!), and they aren't at all identical. They have a sibling/parent resemblence, but they definitely aren't identical.

Also, in the Mack Family, Molly went off to college and so did her brother Jack. There was some saving and exiting, beginning a new game-play session, and shortly before their parents got divorced they got pregnant again. That baby isn't yet an adult, but does this mean that she will look exactly like Molly when she grows up? Because so far, as a toddler, the only similarity they have is brown hair.

A few people have said that their kids' personalities will be exactly the same, but they look different.. well I -always- forget to roll the pacifier, and I get kids that look the same (or at least reallyreallyreally close to the same) but most of the time they'll have completely different personalities! *shrug* I guess all of our games have their own little quirks, lol ^^

punkybreester thats how its is usually for me they loo teh same but usully slightly different personality

Interests will vary slightly. Faces and actual personality traits - and their sign will be identical. :P

The thing that makes me crazy, is the kids ALWAYS 100% of the time have the father's hair color. Even if I roll the pacifier a hundred times in cas or if they're born in game

I hate that too. It's like Maxis thought that just because he's a man, he automatically has the more dominant genes. I look just like my mother. My cousin looks just like her mother, my aunt.

It irks me.

Just what is the hair color of the parents? (I haven't had that occur except in situations where color dominance could explain it -- like in my one Don/Nina child around the time of Nightlife).

And re the firstborn effect -- I've even seen it jump neighborhoods with respect to Maxis sims (custom/downloaded sims are different in each neighborhood, even if placed in multiple NH's.) I've definitely seen it with the firstborn child of Orlando Centowski and Stella Terrano in two different custom 'hoods.

what exactly is "rolling the pacifier?"

I don't roll pacifiers but my sims never look the same... weird....

ROLLING THE PACIFIER
Purpose: a way to prevent identical appearance of born sims
Howto: Before your baby is born, save and go to the neigborhood screen, enter Create-A-Sim, and select new sim. Keep on clicking the randomize button, cancel the whole process, and return to your lot.

First of all, I just have uni. Second of all, I was most perplexed after I heard about the whole "clonebabies unless you roll the pacifier thing," because it was after I'd had six babies in my first generation of my legacy. (4&5 are twins, but there are tiny little differences among the rest of the kids, too. I can't remember if there are identical personalities, but they aren't all identical!)



Here they are, though this is not exactly scientific, though I can tell you with my play habits and the space between the kids, I don't think that two were born in one gameload aside from the twins.

So I decided to do HP's suggestion, and I got what may seem to be some wacky results. (And while I hate the time I spent reloading the game, at least I got to play some Elite Beat Agents while I waited.)

Here's the three kids I ended up with:

Note the difference in the noses, of the males at least.

Straight on:









I booted up SimPE to look at their genetics, since I can't eyeball whether they have the same skintone or eyes (as I've made my custom content genetic), and here's what I've got:

Male 1
eye: 5ab5bbe6-43e1-54ab-b123-478e29c2e0cf
facial feature: mouth, jaw, ears
skintone: a0338326-48fa-9de5-a7ad-cbaa96727c91

Male 2
eye: 5ab5bbe6-43e1-54ab-b123-478e29c2e0cf
facial feature: mouth, eyes, jaw, ears
skintone: 98354be9-4ebe-132f-c479-818f599af6eb

Female
eye: 5ab5bbe6-43e1-54ab-b123-478e29c2e0cf
facial feature: mouth, eyes, jaw, ears
skintone: 98354be9-4ebe-132f-c479-818f599af6eb

Male 1 is a Gemini, Male 2 and the Female are both Leos with identical personality points. The first male's personality is really similar to his brother and sister, though, except for neatness.

I have no idea what the hell this means. The second two are clones, essentially, but the first one isn't. I made them all the exact same way, load game, enter neighborhood, lot, INSIM, have baby, save, leave, repeat. (As in, quit to desktop, reload game, repeat.)

I know a lot of times when I'm making an entire family in CAS, I'll keep rolling through offspring and I'll hit a lot of the same facial features and the same skins. I'm thinking that since the facial traits that are generic are things like the whole eye orbit shape and jaws, etc, that there isn't a whole lot of variation to begin with, which could explain my results.

I've seen other people's clonebabies though, so I know they're not making that up. I just wonder if the huge variance in my legacy family was because the parents had completely different genetics, and that I'd tweaked their recessive genes so they weren't homozygous for anything in terms of hair, eyes, and skin.

My conclusion is that if there's a bug, it's not in my game, or at least, it's not always true for my game. :shrug:

What counts as a play session? I will play a few families before exiting the game. I usually never play just one. I have never experienced this...is that why?

The 'play session' is the part between you booting up the game and exiting the game.

I'm having another situation over here-- no matter how many times I re-roll genetics in CAS, my sims are STILL having clone!babies! Admittedly, in the Legacy it's okay because the firstborn was amazingly perfect (a little on the grouchy side, but that can probably be mended), but it still annoys me!

Here's basically how it works:

Say you have a generator that makes random numbers. Each number corresponds to a different set of personalities/appearances. If it generates a new number for every birth, you get random kids.

But say you want to save time, so you make a list of numbers it generates. Fair enough, each number is a different kid to a couple.

But then say that when you close the program you forget what number you were on, so you start over at the first one. If you have couple A use number #1, then quit, then play couple B with number #1, the kid will look different than the first kid because it's got different genetics from its different parents, so you won't notice. If you then go back to the first couple, well, it's on number #2, so that's a different kid.

But if you have couple A have a baby, save, quit, then have couple A have another baby, it's still using number #1, so it'll be identical.

Rolling the pacifier (which you can do using the "randomize" button or by making 2 adults and clicking the pacifier a few times to randomize a baby) will make it use up numbers 1-N (where N is the nyumber of times you clicked) so it'll start on number #N, not #1 again, and the baby will be different.

If you play houses in rotation, you may never notice this because you may never have the same house have 2 babies in a row using number #1.

I have never "rolled the pacifier" in my sim life and my children have always had their own unique stylings *shrugs*

I wonder if those who don't have this problem maybe just do not notice it. Do you put the EXACT same outfits, hairstyles, makeup, etc. on your sims? I doubt it, so maybe it's not as noticeable. As in the pic I posted already, even with unique styles, they STILL are clones of each other. Whenever this happens to me, even if the sims are born with different skin tones which i geneticize, they still end up with the exact same facial structure and personalities.

lol at least your clones are attractive zizismommy half the ones i get are fugly