Hi everyone, here is something I am running into in my game and I wonder if anyone else is experiencing this:

I am running four different families at once- but no matter what the parents look like, all the kids keep coming out looking the same! They all seem to have that sandy brown/muddy blonde colored hair, even in the family where the mother is a rainbow-haired lady and the father has black-and-white hair! In another family the mother has long brown hair and the father has black hair, yet all three of their daughters have dirty blonde hair with a yellow headband

Of all the children across the four families (14 total), there are only THREE who don't have this hair color >_< (One is a girl with a dark brown updo, one is a girl with long strawberry blonde hair, and the other is a boy with red spiky hair.)

Does anyone know why this is happening with my families? Is it just a big coincidence? Do the kids' looks normally have anything to do with the parents'?

It's not a big deal or anything, and I am certainly enjoying the game a lot- but it's too bad that the cute/unique looks never seem to get passed down at all

I have 5 families and one family all the kids look alike.They all have blond hair and the same faces.There are 3 girls and 1 boy.The mother is blondand the father brunette.

I've never had this issue until just recently. It seems like now in every family there's at least 2 or 3 duplicates that aren't twins or triplets. I have had one family where every kid came out with the same hair. I think it might just be some crazy coincidence. From what I can tell, the parents definitely play a part in what the children look like. For example, I had a blonde married to a redhead and every child came out redheaded except for one that came out blonde. And in many cases, I get kids that look like their parents.

The “genetics” in Virtual Families are similar to the “genetics” in Virtual Villagers, i.e. what code the program uses to determine which head a new family member will have.

There have been a couple of threads about this already, here and here

Basically, if you look at the image files for heads within the game (probably in the folder Program Files/Virtual Families/Images), and number them from top to bottom (1 to 50), the child of any two people in the game will be the average number of their head numbers.

Here is an example of how to number the heads:



This is why most people in VF will have sandy/light brown hair: because those people are in the middle of the heads in the image file – it’s just a question of mathematics. Their number head is the most likely outcome.

Just think of rolling two dice and what numbers you can get, there are some numbers that are more likely to come out, simply because there are more ways of making them.

The only way you’ll get a ‘strong’ hair colour that is the same as their parents (such as black or blonde) is if you put two people together with similar hair, and therefore similar numbers on the scale.

Take a look at these examples:

Ah thank you very much for explaining that to me! I do seem to have a few kids who are "one-offs" though (as in the math doesn't add up), though they're probably adoptees I have forgotten about :P

I wish I knew how to rearrange the heads properly so I could get some of the more interesting ones in the middle, but alas my image editing skills are lacking

Yep sometimes an anomalous kid pops out that doesn't seem to fit...sometimes that's a good thing, gives you a chance for more diversity!

Ah! But I have a light brown/dirty blond woman and a red-haired man, and they had black-haird twins!

Again, sometimes there are odd results...I had a Very blonde couple have a black haired child