Townie Generator Spawning Genetically Impossible Families

In real life genetics it is possible for a passive gene to be inherited and show in grandchildren - e.g. the parents can both have blue eyes, but carry the allele for green eyes from their parents. So the grandchild can inherit the green eyes. Same for other features like hair colour - e.g. both parents have dark brown hair, but the child gets blonde because a grandparent had blonde and the parents were carriers.

My game mostly generated single parents with one child, and these could be really variable, like a white parent with a black child. But because the other parent was unknown, it was all technically possible - or you could say they were adopted. It was a bit weird for me though, so I went into Manage Households and deleted the children and recreated them using the parent genetics in CAS.

The other type of family my game generated was two elder grandparents with a young adult grandchild and a teen grandchild, so I haven't seen anything yet that was really out of place.

I do know of two townie family the game made where there are two parents and a teenager - in those cases the teen looked just like the parents, so it seemed to work fine there. Well, actually the teen has slightly lighter skin compared to both parents, but that could just be explained by the grandparent thing or natual variation.

Hi @Lorraine-Simmer, @simvasion,

Thanks for your feedback on this! And thanks for the great explanation on how genetics are not always predictable, @simvasion 🙂  Indeed, I have a good example of it in real life: my cousin is blonde and has blue eyes, when both her parents have dark eyes and hair. Turns out she looks a lot like our grandmother!

Anyway, back to The Sims world 😉 I'll take note of your feedback and forward it, thanks again for taking the time to write it!

-Mai

@EA_Mai, Hello!  Yes, your real-life example is genetically possible because the parents had dark eyes and hair, but dark is dominant, so this means that they had to have a hidden recessive blue eye and blonde gene that the dark hair and eye gene was hiding.  However, the example that @Lorraine-Simmer gave of having the opposite in her game of 2 blue-eyed blondes giving birth to children with brown hair and eyes is genetically impossible because for the recessive blonde hair and blue eye genes to show up in the parents means that the parents have two copies of the recessive gene and therefore can't give a dominant dark gene they don't have!  The "skipping a generation" only works with dark dominant genes giving rise to light recessive genes.  (Granted, eye color is a bit more complex due to the more complex nature of the eye genes and hybrid colors like hazel and green, etc., but sticking with only blue and brown examples, 2 browns can make a blue, but 2 blues can never make a brown!)  I hope I explained this clearly.🙂  Its hard to do without a chart! 😞  So for those of us who love Biology, it can be aggravating. 😮 I always tell myself that the children are adopted, so I don't stew over it!  Besides adoption is a wonderful thing! ❤️

Yes, if you hadn't figured it out, I'm a geek! 🤓 LOL 😃

On a similar note, with Townies, I had my Sim marry a Townie woman and moved her adult sister in as well.  The women had the same last name, but when I went into their family trees, they didn't appear on each others' trees!  I assumed they weren't roommates since they had the same last name!?!! 🤔

Don't worry about the chart, @PugLove888, you made it very clear and I still have fresh Mendel's peas 😉 Nothing to add there, great explanation of real life Biology.

To which point Sims world is based in real life genetics... well, that's something you can definitely give your feedback about as you are doing. Happy to keep reading your thoughts on this!

-Mai

PS: Added your townies with same surname - no family to my feedback list 😉

@EA_Mai, Thanks!  I'm glad you understood me.  It's not a deal breaker, but it is annoying to people who like science or who have OCD (or both!) 😃  Funny, I was going to mention Gregor Mendel and his peas, but thought that might be a bit too nerdy or boring for most people! :eahigh_file:

Just this past summer my parents, aunt, uncle, and me were discussing how in the early and even mid 20th century the average person knew almost nothing about genetics and how this often caused false accusations of infidelity!😮😢  My grandma and grandpa had brown eyes, but my dad had blue eyes, so grandpa's side of the family were very upset thinking grandma wasn't faithful (never mind the fact that my grandpa's sister had blue eyes, so they did exist on their side of the family!)  As my dad got older though, grandpa's side of the family realized that except for eye color, my dad was a dead ringer for grandpa! LOL😃:eahigh_file:  So my grandma's loyalty wasn't in question anymore, thank God! 

Also, thanks for adding the problem with Townies living in the same household with the same last name not being related in the family tree!  It is also sad that if in the game there is a married couple with no children and one spouse dies, the remaining spouse does not have him or her in her family tree after he or she dies -- but if the couple have a child and one spouse dies, then the dead spouse remains in the family tree!  This isn't fair to people who don't have children. Married people who are childless are still family! 😢