Seems quite a few prefer the Sims 3 flavor of inheritance. I find this surprising because I thought either people wanted the Sims 2 genetics or just didn't care either way.

Sims 3 handles adopted children the same. When the adopted children have their kids, the genetics of their adopted parents are included in the calculation.

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_colormixer.asp

like this, the game automatically picks the middle of the gradient. right now the colour picker uses html colour codes and that website uses a very simple programme.



yeah that would be way better. I didn't play much sims 2 so I didn't realise you could make it that complex and awesome.
I don't think they do make the distinction, although hopefully they will expand family trees a bit more and cause that to happen.

A gradient is a good way to figure out some middle colors, but try this gradient: #FFFFCC (blond) and #996633 (dark brown). Notice the muddy gray colors? There is also the possibility of a greenish result with some mixes, and this is only human-like colors (notice this is a fixed set of colors).

When you add in other colors (purple, pink, etc.), the risk of ending up with grey or muddy green increases. And if I'm not mistaken, if you keep mixing colors, you do end up with grey eventually. This just happens with mixing colors without human intervention.

Both yes and no. If you were mixing colours from the entire RGB colour spectrum, then yes, you would end up with grey, but as long as we're talking about human hair colours it wouldn't happen quite that way... I think.
Look at the two examples you gave: in blond, #FFFFCC, you have red and green tied as the strongest value, with blue the weakest. In dark brown, #996633, red is the strongest and blue the weakest again. In red hair, red would obviously be the strongest component again, and from a quick look at the colour spectrum I gather that blue would never overtake green in any of the red hairtones.
So it seems to me that this is an inherent... trait?.. of human hair - no matter how you mix human hair colours in the colour mixer, you would always end up with something where the red component is the strongest and blue the weakest. So never actual grey.

Edit: Sorry, I missed that you said "when you add in other colors (purple, pink, etc.)". Yes, with colours outside the naturally occuring human hair colours you might eventually end up with the grey effect, but I think it's safe to assume that most players play with regular hair colours, so for them a RGB mix wouldn't produce too strange results. As long as the game understands to differentiate between natural and dyed hair colours, of course.

I'm not expert on color theory, but from researching color mixing and gradients, this is my guess:
Grey occurs when the three values are equal or close to equal. I would think this tends to happen most when one of the starting values are near white (mostly) or near black, when all 3 values are at their closest (255,255,255 / 0,0,0).

Greenish can occur when Red and Green values are close. This does not mean that you will get green, but that you will get greenish, and that it happens mostly with blond mixes, resulting in a muddy green. I had this happen several times while manually mixing sim in-game hair colors. I've attached a jpg of the breakdown of the second color in the example gradient. Notice how the second color is close to the grey spectrum. And also, look at the hue. It's a very bright yellow with a hint of green in it and could become problematic depending on which color its mixed with.

I've been told by a very reliable source, and have learned since from my own trials and errors that there is no way to avoid this in auto mixing unless you have fixed colors.

I would like to see in ts4 proper race/ethnicity features. They did an approx with WA worlds population. I think it is not so difficult to create a few premade sims or some options to choose what types of color ramps for skins, eyes or facial and body traits are "wearing" the npcs or new inmigrant families to keep a flavor in a given world, if a player decides it so.

On the note of using a RBG blending model,

I have given up on Sims3 genetics and use a version of this on all my active families. I roll 0-5 options for parents and 0-2 For grandparents, then divide by the options entered.

0-5xMother + 0-5xFather + 0-2xEach Grandparent = # / number of options = the R out of the RBG of a child's root hair color. Does that make any sense? So the following could happen.

10x2 + 210x5 + 0x2 + 20x1 + 220x1 + 190x1 = 1500 / 12 = 125 or
250x1 + 150x3 + 260x2 + 200x2 + 100x1 +140x2 = 1880 / 11 = 170.9 (171)

It can be a little time consuming, and I have to keep notes, but I imagine it wouldn't be that hard for a computer to handle. It works out probably 90% of the time, with the grey/green problem happening 10% or so. That requires some human number editing but... I much prefer that to the sims3 genetics.

I think we either have two options, a RBG blending system (not necessarily like mine) or a simple colour blending scale.

Something like... Blue (BB), BlueGreen (BG), Green(GG), GreenYellow(GY), YellowOrange(YO), Orange(OO), OrangeRed(OR), etc Each is a genetic marker, and the scale runs from the darkest (black) to the lightest (white) and everything in between or a scale of 0-100. A family might look like the following.

Father: BB 0
Mother: GY 100
Daughter: BG 50
Son: BY 50
Daughter in Law: OR 80
Grandchild: YO 65

These are just ideas. My main point is the Sims3 genetics must stop.

An annoying feature of TS3 genetics that I'd like to see fixed in this game: Body sliders- muscle, weight, etc- make far less of a difference to any life stage that isn't the young adult or adult stage. Without CC body sliders, you often get situations where three children starting with the same builds have marginally different body shapes as teenagers, drastically different body shapes as adults, then revert back to all having largely similar body shapes as elders. This doesn't make any sense at all, and I want it done away with so that sims with very different genetics consistently have very different builds to one another throughout their lives for the sake of variety.

Also, why the hell does the weight slider for TS3 children do nothing if it's lowered past the middle? You can only have average-sized to obese children in TS3 as a result without extra sliders, thin ones are designed to be impossible by default. That doesn't make even the slightest bit of sense.

I mean, what is this, some kind of snarky indictment of current health trends among the young?

+I want to have both positive and negative traits on a sim. 4-5 positives, 2-3 negatives, 1 neutral one (as in the aspiration system from TS2). This would balance the poor sims, not making them utterly broken, and actually giving them flaws.
+More traits that are actually useful for something, or which their interactions make sense from a inter-sim point of view.
+Remove useless traits such as Vehicle Enthusiast and Never Nude. They do not bring anything useful to the game experience.
+Better hair colour management: Keep somewhere information as how the character's hair was when it was born.

I agree with you on most of these except remove seemingly useless traits. I think having more traits and forcing each sim to have a certain number of negative traits to balance the positives (as you suggested) would work perfectly. They just have to make the reactions to those traits stand out more as well.

The "vehicle enthusiast" and "never nude" traits don't have to be useless. The former can focus on a natural love or admiration for vehicles with a boost in Sims working on cars as mechanics, it can serve as an encouragement for Sims to converse about vehicles, and it can also encourage Sims to watch and/or participate in vehicle-related activities, such as watching a car race or playing a racing game. The latter can be a "prudish" trait where Sims absolutely want nothing to do with nudity, they will never be seen naked, and are appalled by Sims who are naked in public or who are nudists, etc.

Similarly, the "daredevil" trait doesn't have to be useless if it actually lived up to its name. Sims with this trait should be encouraged to perform risky interactions that can cause an adrenaline rush. If The Sims 4 were to offer amusement park rides and bungee jumping, daredevil Sims should get some kind of boost in fun and be encouraged to participate in these activities more often.

What I do find to be pointless traits, however, are the ones that are specific to a career or skill, such as "discipline" and "eccentric." Why not make these traits global? The former can be perfect for serious Sims who are very responsible and do what they are supposed to do without procrastinating. They may or may not have enjoyment in life, depending on their responsibilities. The latter can expand to Sims who have eclectic musical tastes, prefer out-of-the-ordinary fashions, and it can encourage Sims to invent stuff like in The Sims 3. They should have quite the mind!

So, really, many of the useless traits can be expanded upon and no longer be useless. "Star quality" only for the Late Night careers? Seriously, EA?

Oh man do I have a lot to say about this issue! But i'll keep it sweet and short for everyones sake:

• No mutated hair/eye colour (I know there's a mod but still)
• No clones (need I say more?)
• If (by some miracle) there are no clones, then a better "mixing of the genes" system will be much appreciated. They always look like complete freaks.
• More voices. Personally I only like 1/3 voices for both males and females and i'm getting tired of listening to the same voices each generation.

I could go on and on and on. More sliders, better fur for pets but like I said, i'm keeping it short

At the very least I expect sims 2 genetics :lovestruc
But If were to have higher expectations, I would the sims 4 genetics to be more advanced than the sims 2 system.

Maybe traits should be like Sims Medieval where you have one or more slots that can only be used for "flaws", ideally the flaws would have funny or quirky aspects to them so they wouldn't be just annoying, and if your sim did really well in life they might be able to overcome their flaws and replace them with opposite good traits that could only be got that way, like a dunce sim would learn slower but taking that flaw would be the only way to get the supergenius trait which would allow your sims to learn super fast and have access to a special career or something. But it shouldn't be easy to overcome their flaws, you should have to have your sim do something like have them maximise a skill in spite of their slow learning speed (if we are talking about the dunce flaw) there could be a different one for each flaw, and then pay a ton of lifetime happiness points (or whatever they will call them in Sims 4).

Or if you wanted you could let them keep their flaws just because they are funny or because you want a challenge.

I'm not really attached to this idea, just something I'm throwing out for consideration.

^^^^^If we could have flaws with our traits that would be cool/....i also think it would be cool if they brought back turn on's and off's from sims 2

How about a voice chooser? Like you could have a suave voice or a manly voice or a feminine voice or others for your sim! Like, all sims would speak simlish, but all have diff. ways of saying things in simlish! Just a thought

I would like something like this, giving us options so everyone can have it their way. Personally I never really liked the dominant/recessive thing even if it was more realistic, because recessive traits (especially custom ones that were super-recessive) tended to never show up again unless you kept making other CAS sims with the same trait to marry your sims... And if you had one parent with only dominant genes, all the kids would have the same hair/eye colors.. I like the variety in TS3. And I like being able to have unnatural colors pass on, sometimes even dyed colors (like if I have a sim born with poo-greenish-brown hair and don't want it to pass on), even if it makes no sense