How does face generation work for children born to parents who wed after campaign start?

[Will Greaves]

So you know how, if two NPCs marry after the campaign starts, and then have children, all of their children of a given sex will look the same as each other? (At least, that's how it is in 1.5.6, and I haven't seen anything about it having been fixed in later versions). For example, Bob and Jill get married in Campaign 1, ten days in, and end up having several daughters, all of whom look the same as each other. So if Bob & Jill get married in Campaign 2, too, will all of their daughters in Campaign 2 look the same as they did in Campaign 1?

I've been wondering if the parental face combinations are truly randomized. I think it unlikely, since so many of the children are good-looking (unlike the freakish, inhuman mutants you often get from the randomized companions, and from the "randomize all" button in the face generation screen). I also think it unlikely because of each child being a clone of his/her same-sex siblings (with a few rare exceptions); I wouldn't expect them to look the same if they were totally randomized.

Does anyone know more about how the face generation works?

 

[Apocal]

I've been wondering if the parental face combinations are truly randomized. I think it unlikely, since so many of the children are good-looking (unlike the freakish, inhuman mutants you often get from the randomized companions, and from the "randomize all" button in the face generation screen). I also think it unlikely because of each child being a clone of his/her same-sex siblings (with a few rare exceptions); I wouldn't expect them to look the same if they were totally randomized.

Does anyone know more about how the face generation works?

Daughters are clones of the mother. Sons are clones of the father. It is incredibly noticeable when you have one very dark-skinned parent and one light-skinned parent. The kids don't come out with a variety of skintones between their parents.

 

[Dean Beecham]

I am playing in 1.5.9 and play female . my 2 girls look different than me the main differents is hair and there eyes seem a little different as well plus there size.. My 4 boys look like there dad but all have different fair and facial hair.. My girls were wed the oldest girl only had 1 kid a boy looked nothing like the dad my youngest girl had 4 Girls that look different from there mum a little but all girls look the same like twins her 2 boys much like there dad but again different hair.. i am on my 5th generation and i am playing with my great granddaughter . I would say Hair and facial hair is random and thats good faces can be a little different but there should be more random with eyes and nose ..but its alot better now than what it used to be like.

 

[Will Greaves]

Daughters are clones of the mother. Sons are clones of the father.

No, very much not so, for the most part. There are some rare cases where the children are clones of their parent of the same sex, but these are usually children born to parents who were already married at the campaign start. For children born to parents married after campaign start, they are almost never clones of the parent.

For example, Thasyna in that picture... there are no red-haired nobles in the game at the start of the campaign, and certainly not her parents. She looks nothing like them.

 

[Apocal]

No, very much not so, for the most part. There are some rare cases where the children are clones of their parent of the same sex, but these are usually children born to parents who were already married at the campaign start. For children born to parents married after campaign start, they are almost never clones of the parent.

For example, Thasyna in that picture... there are no red-haired nobles in the game at the start of the campaign, and certainly not her parents. She looks nothing like them.

Then they changed it recently. All the kids in my playthrough are clones of one of their parents.

 

[Will Greaves]

I'm on version 1.5.6.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

No, very much not so, for the most part. There are some rare cases where the children are clones of their parent of the same sex, but these are usually children born to parents who were already married at the campaign start. For children born to parents married after campaign start, they are almost never clones of the parent.

For example, Thasyna in that picture... there are no red-haired nobles in the game at the start of the campaign, and certainly not her parents. She looks nothing like them.

Then they changed it recently. All the kids in my playthrough are clones of one of their parents.

Yeah they changed something, still getting a idea of it as my clan babys get older. I have son that seems to maybe have sliders/hair based of mother(PC) but daughters all have dready corn row things, much to my dismay, don't watch anyone's stuff.

 

[SOku]

No, very much not so, for the most part. There are some rare cases where the children are clones of their parent of the same sex, but these are usually children born to parents who were already married at the campaign start. For children born to parents married after campaign start, they are almost never clones of the parent.

For example, Thasyna in that picture... there are no red-haired nobles in the game at the start of the campaign, and certainly not her parents. She looks nothing like them.

I can upload a screen of my family right now and the general look of my husband ingame when he was still a teen.
My girls are basically my character, my boys are my husband. Clones.
I don't think it got changed recently thought.

 

[Will Greaves]

Strange. Using mods?

 

[Pensaci]

Adding my case, I was playing 1.5.7 and every born npc I had checked has at least slight changes, but also most are slight changes though. The obvious ones yes are hair and makeup, decos.

Have to say the new makeup and decos alike is good thinking to diversity, but personally the overall changes is still too subtle too unnoticeable, definitely would prefer keys to go wild than close to clone imo. I would say my goal can be a almost complete different face at 4th gen, not that players we will sure play that long that is...

Besides this though, childs of same gender seems to be actual clone. I think this is not intended? Like say 4 childs, two boys two girls. Two boys will looks 100% the same, while might be different from father. Two girls will looks 100% the same, while might be different from mother.

 

[Lusitani 5th Empire]

It shouldn't be to difficult to create variety, averaging the values of each parent. E.g.: (value from slider for nose from mother + the value for the same for father)/2, plus some more random percentage attributed to each phenotype characteristic. Maybe you have to adjust for the values according to the child sex, possibly giving less importance to the "genes" of the opposite sex (less prevalence of "genes" of the mother if the child is a male and vice-versa)
Or maybe codding for this is more work than it looks, I don't know...

 

[Will Greaves]

The biggest problem I've seen when trying to create (for my now-abandoned mod) a range of faces which has a high degree of variation, but no outliers outside of reasonable human possibility, is this: you can have each range of values (i.e. "the set min and max on each slider") be within the realm of human possibility, but the combinations of all the sliders may result in a face outside of the realm of human possibility.

For example, two sliders: eye inner height and eye outer height. You can give the inner height a range that falls into human believability, and you can get the outer height a believable range as well. However, when the two ranges are combined onto one face, the combination often falls outside of the plausible range, resulting in a freakish look (specifically, the inner eye being much higher than the outer eye, which isn't humanly possible).

What is needed is some way of 'linking' ranges. For example, "inner eye height can range from 2 to 8, and outer eye height can range from 2 to 8, but inner eye height cannot exceed outer eye height by more than 1.5." The part in bold currently isn't possible to do, and that's the key to increasing variety without ending up with inhuman-looking mutants.

But, since no one at Taleworlds will take note of this post, I'm kind of talking to a wall, I suppose.

 

[Will Greaves]

I've updated the OP to correct an error; Serendon & Megethia do start the campaign married (so, presumably, their daughters will always look the same in every campaign, unless a game update changes something).

The question remains: for NPC characters who marry after the campaign starts (rather than starting already married), will their children look the same between two campaigns in which those two same characters happen to marry each other?