Sim 2 Pregnancy Mod Idea
#1 08-05-2011 
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I've been looking for someone who has better knowledge of sim codding.
I talked to Echo on MTS about this idea, and although she has retired said it was partial feasible.
The idea: During a sim's second trimester of pregnancy have a NPC doctor show up at the house, and reveal the gender of the unborn. An ultrasound image will then appear in the sim mother's inventory.
If a person doesn't wish to know the gender, then a "generic" ultrasound appears.
The way I see it playing out in my head is with pop ups asking if you want to know the gender of the child.
If yes, Bluish ultrasound for a boy or Pinkish ultrasound for a girl
If no, Greyscale ultrasound.

The biggest obstacle would be the game's coin toss for the gender, which to my understanding occurs just prior to birth. The only way I can think of countering this, is making the game do the coin toss earlier... just prior to the doc visit.

I would like to hear you ideas on this.
Sincerly,
Armand Strange.

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#2 08-05-2011 
Hi Armand,

Let's have a look. The idea is a nice one, I must grant you that. However, let me tell you something about sim births, so you'll understand why it can not be.

When a sim is pregnant, the new-to-be-born baby doesn't actually exist yet. And it keeps not existing until the time of birth. You know when that screen comes up about the new arrival, and the stork untying some extra strongly tied knots? THAT is the moment at which the new sim is actually being created. And the routine for that is a primitive that nobody can mod or alter in any way... The big problem is that this coin toss you're mentioning, is included INSIDE this primitive that nobody can even look at. So we can't influence it in any way, nor can we even predict the gender of what's going to come. That gender is only known once that window dissappears again.

So, an NPC doctor coming by and examining the mother, all nice and well IF someone would be willing to invent a way to add a new NPC type to the game (which is yet another BIG hurdle), but this doctor revealing the sex of a non-existing sim? I hope you see how impossible that would be...

And this really is a pity, because I've been thinking about such things, too. For my Alien Experiments mod, I actually even wanted to try some in-game gender-changing (A sim gets abducted as a male, comes back as a female), which obviously never happened, either. One CAN change a sim's gender using SimPE, but not in the game itself! That's all part of the same problem, by the way.

But, to be completely honest, this is only the view of someone who has only been modding for little more than a year. Perhaps there are modders out there that would know better than me, I don't know. But now the question is out in the open, maybe someone sees it, and can tell you where to look for a more desirable answer.

I hope to learn from such people!

Thank you for asking, and I hope to be able to do more on your next request (if you have any).

Good luck in your search, and happy Simming,

Ted/BO

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#3 08-05-2011 
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I know that getting an NPC to arrive at a specific time is possible, but so far I have only seen them summoned by a beacon. Like, Santa you need the cookies and possibly the Christmas tree. Echo had made and "Easter Bunny" which seems to be summoned via a carrot crest, the last one that comes to mind is Paladin's NPCs. I recall their "Mask" sim being summoned by the maks of Loki, and Wonder Woman via a statue of said person. In all, the NPC part is feasible and as Echo put it, he would have a 50/50 chance of guessing the gender of the child.
Thank you for giving me greater understanding of the obstacles in the way of said mod and more of the way sim birth works. You went into more detail than others before you and I appreciate that.


~Armand

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#4 08-05-2011 
Yeah, I've heard that before: most modders will simply say: "Nope, can't be done!", and as far as they're concerned that's where the story ends. Not for me, though; I've always found it important myself to hear why something wouldn't work, so I expect others will want that too, and I try to give them what info they need to understand why it's out of my reach, or altogether impossible.

Indeed, getting the NPC to appear isn't the problem. The real problem there is: there IS no NPC doctor, so one would need to be created! Not many people know how to do that, and I'm not one of the few. The beacon would be easy again: whenever a sim gets pregnant, a pregnancy controller is created on the lot. That controller could be the beacon: when a certain amount of time has elapsed since the creation of the beacon, and the pregnant sim linked to that beacon is at home, the doctor could be summoned. And predicting the gender would indeed be just a wild guess with 50% chance of success. Since we already know with 50% certainty that the child will be of either gender, who needs a doctor with such poor skill? Smile

~Ted/BO

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#5 08-05-2011 
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So things we do have, the beacon... and I'm sure I know where one could find a doctor for the game. I think you could use that Psychiatrist sim... but I think that would be a bit dodgy, I'm not to sure how the game see's him. Y'know like an NPC or like an object like that annoying Rod Humble.

Any how, this is all speculation on how one could go about this and still leaves the gender guessing problem. If only we could see the sim's future...

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