Child generator brainstorming

[Csatádi]

As we know the babies of a family are clones of each other currently, so sooner or later TW will make a working child generator. But how sould it work? What would be the best solution?

Averaging the features of the parents would be wrong, because everybody would look the same after a few generations. Okay, we won't play for generations, but still. People have different features in real life so this should be represented in the game somehow.

I think genetics basically should be ignored. It doesn't worth the effort to research it, and it would unnecessarily complicate the algorithm. It might be applied only when it's very easy.

I would take the features of the parents one by one, and pick one of them randomly. For example father has nose size 4, mother has 7, flip a coin to choose one of them. There could be some randomness, for example if the random favors the father, another random roll could change it by a step. For the sake of simplicity, I assume a 0-10 scale here, so instead of 4, the nose size could be 3, 4 or 5.

Some traits should be averaged. Typically the the skin color. There are 22 types. When rounding is needed, it should be randomized. For example father has skin color 4, mother has 7, the sum is 11.
I would also use the average in case of Eye Shape, Monolid Eyes and Eye Outer Height so the Khuzait eyes can be mixed well in case of mixed children. The random factor could be still applied.
Height could be averaged as well with some randomness.
Hair color could be chosen like the rest but without the range factor. The range could lead some odd results here, you'll see if you check their order. However, when black color is combined with a light one (blond, red), the child should have brown hair and neither of the parents. If you want to complicate it, you might give the hair color of a parent with 10-20% chance.

In case of hair types, make a group of straight and curly hairs. If both parents have straight hair types, the child should, too. The same rule applies for curly parents. When they are mixed, the game could pick any hair style.

Skin Type should be inherited from father to son and mother to daughter.

Voice should be inherited from father to son and mother to daughter but Voice Pitch could be averaged with +-10% randomness.

Build can be averaged.

A possible funny feature could be lookalikes. It's only obvious in case of mother-daughter and father-son relation, but you may test it in the other cases as well.
Give it 5% chance or so.
Take only the features of the father or the mother and apply the randomizer. Hair and eye colors should go without the randomizer but the skin color still should be averaged.

What do you think?

I want to test it with a few samples so it might bring up something. I won't decipher the body code so I will set the values manually.
I'm curious about the results and will post them later.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

ater TW will make a working child generator

But they already had one that worked perfectly!


I think for default for the AI , just a range of sliders (like-/+ up 20%) from one parent and a random hair style would be okay, BUT for the player we could be able you use the same slider screen to change our family member appearance to what we want if we want to take the time.

 

[Csatádi]

Well, a simpler solution could work, too. But it would provide some strange combinations when the skin colors are very different.
Anyhow, I made some faces using my plan. I skipped facial hair, so you can compare them. Boy 1 and 2 were generated randomly, and I just used the alternate possibilities for the color combinations.

Lessons learned:
-There must be skin variations, but not a totally random way. Nr 2 and 4 are similar, both have more facial hair traces.
-Hair results are better compared what we get when the game generates the parents of our hero.
-Female faces are too similar to each other. All have that spiky chin.
-I could have used a bit higher randomness factor.

Example for very different parents. I'm quite satisfied with the result.
I used the average values of the parents for all stats of the eyes with a bit randomness.

 

[Csatádi]

And the girls.

 

[Adov]

There was a mod called Heritage. It had a number of features like transferring clan leadership to any clan member for 100 influence and more efficient way of brokering marriage for family members. But more relevantly it had quite a simple and very efficient algorhythm of randomizing children's faces. In terms of apperance, it's results were just brilliant. The algorhythm was pretty much what you suggested - it took random values between those of respective dials of the parents' and gave the children that. Unfortunately, the last time this algorhythm was updated in the mod, the vanilla engine made children exact copies of parents rather than spawning identically mixed siblings from any given couple. So the conditions for this algorhythm to happen were just never met in the late versions. But the source code is available somewhere and it looks pretty simple. Would be great if someone just adapted that to the current version.
In terms of trait inheritance, I noticed that generally sons inherit father's traits and daughters inherit mother's. I think this is a bit too rigid of system - would be cool if sometimes it could be the opposite way around or a somewhat of a mix of two. What adds a bit of flavor to this is sometimes they just inherit some traits rather than a full set. This is easier to spot with characters that have a lot of different traits (in my case I believe it was Zlatka and Siga or her trait-wise identical daughter Apolanea - Zlatka's daughter ended up profligate inheriting impulsive and generous only, can't remember what the Kuloving daughter inherited but something along those lines as well). It is also quite dissapointing that player's offspring of the same sex don't seem to inherit anything - if you play as a man, all your sons end up 'thoroughly conventional' while daughters inherit mother's traits. And it doesn't matter whether you had your traits from character creation or acquired them through gameplay. Must have something to do with the player's traits being dynamic.
To sum it up, it would be cool if the childen's traits were less predictable and took both parents' traits into account rather than just the same-sex parent. And yea, please fix player's traits inheritance.

 

[Csatádi]

There was a mod called Heritage.

Its features are cool.