Useful information about Pregnancy

[Seabody]

I didn't know where to put this, so I put it here.
I was diving through the code, taking a look at interesting stuff, and I found some potentially useful information about Sim Pregnancy. There is a decent amount of information I found, so I'll try my very best to summarize it. This is all listed in the order that it is found in the code, and I'm skipping stuff that has no value (as in, it exists, but the game doesn't respond to it) and the more advanced stuff at the end of the file (that is stuff about BroadcastPulse, which I don't understand).

• A Sim will always throw up (if they are pregnant) 8 hours after they Try for Baby. After that, there is a 10% chance that they will get nausea during hours 9-24 of Pregnancy. This is attempted 15 times. So, your Sim can vomit up to 15 times during the pregnancy, and there is a 10% chance each time.
• At 40 hours after Try for Baby, the Sim will start the Pregnant Walk. Basically, they stop their normal walk and walk like they're pregnant.
• The mother will always have four days off. The Spouse gets two days off when the nooboo is born.
• There is an 8.3% chance that the mother will get a backache during hour 24 to 72 of Pregnancy, and, like Nausea, this is attempted multiple times. It's attempted 48 times, with an 8.3% chance on each.
• Contractions start at hour 70 of Pregnancy. This is also when the Sim can go to hospital to have the baby.
• Now, here is the chance for twins and triplets! The chance of getting Twins at a normal, non-altered-by-radio-and-tv-and-fertility-treatment level is 2.5% and the chance for Triplets in the same scenario is 0.1%. So you honestly have almost no chance of Twins/Triplets in a normal pregnancy.
• The maximum chance of having twins with TV/Radio is 75% after 15 hours of either one or 6 hours of both, and chance of triplets is maxed at a whopping 3%. (Thanks Lasnien. The original info I had posted at this bullet point is here)
• An Additive Bonus to Average Mood Per Pregnancy Book read by Mom and Dad of 15 (each) is applied when a parent reads a pregnancy book. *
• There is a 50/50 base chance for a boy or a girl. Each Apple/Watermelon adds 0.1 to this chance. The maximum offset allowed is 0.5. What does this mean? It only takes 5 of a fruit to guarantee the gender.
• NPC babies stay babies for 1 day maximum. Period.
• Sims react to contractions for 20 minutes.
• The "liking threshold to go home with mother from hospital" is 30. *
• If either parent has drunk a Ghost Potion, there's a 50/50 chance that the baby will be a ghost.
• A baby has a 0% chance to mutate and become some random occult that is not a Simbot, Unicorn, Imaginary Friend, or Mummy. I mention this because it's an interesting case where all the coding is there but EA skipped out on including it in the game proper.
• There's an improved chance of pregnancy of 0.2 (additive) during the full moon.
• Finally, I thought I'd just point out a random piece of code: EA originally had Tuning in the code to make Pregnancy a life-threatening event - think Fire.

I hope this helps someone, somewhere.

Edited on 2 October 2012 - Updated for SN / 1.38 / 1.39

[Chuckles_82]

Awesome! I admire people who know where to dig through the code and find all this useful information! Call me OCD, but I really love knowing the exact specifics of game mechanics like this.

[Seabody]

Hehe, you're welcome Chuckles. It's fairly simple - the chunk of information I'm interested in is located in one .package file, and I have it all sorted alphabetically once I get in there. EA provides comments in their coding, to help decipher what it all means, and the titles of all the files have good names - the file I found this in started with "Pregnancy".

[Lasnien]

The Maximum Multiplier of having multiple nooboos is 30. Every hour you watch Kids TV or Radio, 2 is added on to the base Multiplier, and every hour you watch Kids TV and Radio, 5 is added on to the base Multiplier.

So, the maximum chance of having twins with TV/Radio is 75% after 15 hours of either one or 6 hours of both, and chance of triplets is maxed at a whopping 3%. My only other question about pregnancy would be the effect of Fertility Treatment and the genie wish for a big family on these chances. It'd be neat to see the overall chances for twins/triplets. 

[cathyknits]

Is there any information about what, exactly, determines how many of the new baby's traits you get to pick?

[Pam]

Great work, Seabody! What is the addictive bonus that's related to the pregnancy books?

[Seabody]

What is the addictive bonus that's related to the pregnancy books?

I don't know. I took the information in the file, and made it easier to read, except for the last two points.

Is there any information about what, exactly, determines how many of the new baby's traits you get to pick?

Not that I can tell. I can really only read certain files, since some are easier to read than others. That information might be in a file I can't read.

[Pam]

I don't know. I took the information in the file, and made it easier to read, except for the last two points.

Not that I can tell. I can really only read certain files, since some are easier to read than others. That information might be in a file I can't read.

Have you been this kind of Computer Whiz all this time since you joined our Forum or is it something relatively new that you've gotten into?

[Seabody]

Have you been this kind of Computer Whiz all this time since you joined our Forum or is it something relatively new that you've gotten into?

I've been great with computers for years. It's natural to me.

[Pam]

I've been great with computers for years. It's natural to me.

Have you been digging into Sims 3 code all this time?  I'm sorry, I just feel like a goof for not knowing how well you know this game from the inside.

[Seabody]

No, I only started around a month ago. I learnt almost all of the stuff I know from the guide. Then, I sometimes look into the code if I want to know something that I can't find on the guide.

[Sportsfan]

Oh he's good Pam. So good that his game doesn't have the athletic skill in the gym bug anymore!

[thesimslover828]

Cool info, it's really nice to have it. I had a Sim that didn't get sick when she was pregnant at all, I was shocked. Maybe it was because she had her athletic skill maxed, I'm not sure. 

[saltpastillen]

Not being sick sounds great. My current sim was sick 13 times this pregnancy (yes, after reading this I just had to count). The fun thing is that she's a party animal, so when she wasn't throwing up she was shaking it up on the floor. I never had anyone get sick that much before.

Really interesting to read Seabody!

[Leto85]

Seabody, will you please write a guide in a topic here on how to dig in these kind of files?
I once have do this with another game (Jurassic Park Operation Genesis), 9 or 10 years ago which was simply possible with nothing more than Wordpad, and the ability to make it compatible. The game had it's natural flaws, such as a limited amount of dinosaur species in your park so I'd changed that value. I'm saying this because, as Sportsfan already have mentioned, you can 'easily' fix bugs in this game perhaps.
I would like to learn more about this, and I'm sure others will too.