There has been a lot of genetic experiments floating around the VF forum and I tried my hand at playing around with genetics and observing the children that come out looking different than their parents.

A "rare child" as used in this topic is a child that features a head that does not belong to his/her parents' genetic pattern. For example, if you locate your bigheads00.png file in the game's Images folder, you can use this as a guideline to see how the children should look and whether or not you have a rare child on your hands!

The rare children are programmed into the game as a way to bring some different looks into the family and keep things exciting! Just like in real life, we won't all turn out looking like our parents and that's just another way we're special.

Example 1:
A lot of you have seen my rainbow-haired girl experiment in which I paired Miss Rainbow with Mr. Spike who is right next to her on the bigheads image. To make sure I don't mistaken a unique looking head with a rare child, I open up the bigheads image and find which children the parents should produce.



According to the placement of these heads, my blue spiked hair man and rainbow haired woman can create any of these heads! How? According to the genetics pattern of the game, you can get any children between the parents, the parents' heads and the heads below and above the parents' heads.

With this in mind, I continued my experiment to see if I can get the Mohawk again and try for the female blue hair.



Unfortunately I haven't gotten the blue-haired girl but since I have had the Mohawk twice already, it is possible for the families to get the heads outside of the parents' heads as long as it is placed only 1 spot above or below them.

As you can see, I also did not run into any rare children during this experiment (although this family is rare to begin with!), so this did not satisfy my curiosity too well!

Example 2:
Mynda posted in another topic that her family had a naturally born rainbow-haired girl and both parents had brown hair.



According to the chart, her children should come out like the following:



This means that Mynda has a very lucky rare child! I decided to recreate her couple and try to find at least two rare children. This will help prove that rare children are random and couples are not limited to having only a certain head show up as a rare child.



The distinct blue borders signify twins, black borders signify triplets and the green outline signifies rare children.

As you can see, I did not get any of the heads that are in that one spot above or below the parents' heads in the chart, but I did receive two different sets of rare children! This is a major contrast to the other experiment I did with my rainbow family, in which I did receive one of the heads above the parents' heads (Mohawk) but no rare children.

We can try to plan our families, but of course there will always be things that we cannot control. Keep backups and keep them updated at crucial points! Don't be discouraged by the rare children either, it's nice to have some diversity too.

One of my couples had dark hair and had a baby from the blonde section of the image file.

I finally started my second 5 of my families. And got the rainbow haired gal and the spikey guy and had 2 adoptions! Weird, I am lucky to get one! I had an adoption before a marriage proposal actually, first time that happened!

So far on my rainbow haired gal and blue spikey haired guy, I have a mohawk, a rainbow haired girl and a spikey blue haired boy. I have one more spot left but they are being difficult!

I also tried the rainbow gal with a normal guy, and so far all their children are boring normal ones. lol Well one has green hair the boy I guess.

I may do another 5 families and see what I can come up with.

Is it just me or do these wild haired people/children just more naughty then the normal kids/adults. Hmm

Lol! I was wondering the same thing KCJen.

My poor rainbow family is in chaos, Spike II has already had a grave infection, they've been pretty sick and everytime I look away all of the rainbow kids and the Mohawk kid is either jumping on the bed or banging dishes

Mine too! I did have the thought that they seemed a bit naughtier that most of the other kids in the game. Arther probably programmed them that way.

Hope Spike II gets better. I always worry about losing one of the kids when they get sick but have been fortunate so far not to have lost any peeps other than to old age.

I'm doing my best to nurse him back to health, buying the health enhancers when they show up. That was actually my first grave infection, so I hope I can help him

OMG my spikey kid is a BRAT! I red glove him from the "wall" he goes to the bed. I red glove him from there, he goes to the "wall". I swear, I wanted to give him a timeout!

The rainbow haired girl is no better at going between the banging dishes and jumping on the bed. They really like the jumping on the bed, I think is why my parents arent breeding, they jump up there and get in their way! But I am afraid to use the red glove and hit a parent on accident. *sigh* dang kids!

LOL! I know exactly what you mean KCJen..I also feel bad for having to red glove them so I just end up picking them up and putting them back down until they do something good to make them feel better and hopefully replace their actions with good ones. >_<

Yeah I need to start that too, this is the first time I have ever had a child "little blue" due to so many punishments! I am starting to feel guilty they will need a therapist soon. lol