Genetic Manipulation

Overview

Have you ever wondered why your sims' default green, grey, and light blue eyes seem to have a 50-50 shot? Have you tried one of the many tutorials on changing the genetic dominance of a custom eye color using levels 3-4 and having default grey, green and blue more dominant? The Reason for this is that the actual game files that hold this information for the default files have the colors set to these values:

green (2) grey (2) light blue (2)

Unfortunately, the alien skintone has a similar problem where it's value is set to (0) and hairtones are brown and black (1), red and blond (2). To change these values is very easy but potentially could mess up your game.

What's Needed

SimPE 0.62 (you can use an earlier version but will have to search for the files, they are not labelled for you)

This file: Original Sims2 folder (no matter what expansions you have)\TSData\Res\Catalog\Skins\Skins.package

Tutorial

First things first. This is what you must do before anything!!! 1. Back up your Skins.package file and put the backup someplace else like your desktop. 2. Open up the original file with SimPE

Hair
3. Select on the top left "Hair Tone XML (XHTN)". In this version of SimPE the tones are labelled for you. Just select the tone you want then in the bottom left box select "Genetic" and enter the value you want in the bottom right section marked "Value"

4. Hair color values are: 0-Most dominant to 4-most recessive (you can use 0 with hair and eyes because they're chosen using an either or pattern.

5. After each change you must click on the "commit" button.

Eyes
3. Select on the top left section "Texture Overlay XML (XTOL)". This will require just a little searching, even with this updated version of SimPE. Hey, it can't all be a walk in the park!

4. On the top right section, click the column title named "Name" and it should order the files alphabetically.

5. Scroll down until you get to the files listed as "uuface_eye_" and you should see all of the eye colors.

6. Select the tone you want, then in the bottom left box select "Genetic" and enter the value you want in the bottom right section marked "Value".

7. See Hair -Step 4

8. Remember to commit after each change.

Skin
3. Select on the top left section "Skin Tone XML (XSTN)". SimPE was kind enough to label these. Select the tone you want then in the bottom left box select "Genetic" and enter the value you want in the bottom right section marked "Value".

4. Unless you want to make more room between two default skintones, I would suggest only changing the alien skintone.

5. Skintone values are unlike the hair and eye values. Here is a quick run-down: .10 Light .30 Medium .60 Medium Dark .90 Dark

-- Skintones of in-game born sims are not chosen by the either or pattern but more like a scale. The sim could have the skintone of the mother, the father or any skintone in between. It could even have a skintone that has the same genetic value (not same skin) as one of the parent sims (ex: Mom has an Enayla skin set to .1, Dad has default medium (.3), child sim could have Enayla skin, Default Light skin (because it is also set to .1), Default Medium skin or whatever other skins are listed in between. -- If you want the tone to be lighter than the lightest skintone pick a decimal smaller than .10 If you want it darker than the darkest skintone pick something larger than .90 up to .99

6. Remember to click commit after each change

Now save the package. If you find something wrong with the games skins, replace the working file with the backup and start over.