Legacy has kindly gifted me with about a million new Townies. Well, give or take one or two.

Back when I was first playing the game, I had replaced all my Townies with Sims I either created myself or downloaded from somewhere. I have no idea now how I did that, and the procedures I've found via Google seem much more complex than what I did -- whatever it was. I just made up new Sims in the Sim Bin (with Bodyshop, IIRC), and then -- somehow -- swapped them in for existing Townies. My Storytelling file is full of group shots of batches of Sims I created in this manner. They were moved to the Families bin, and then replaced the Townies. Danged if I can remember how I did that.

The converse is also true. I took several Townies and remade them with Sims out of the bin, then converted them to playable Sims. Several of my families are Townies "recycled" in this fashion. Danged if I can remember how I did that, either. But my Sim bin is full of Sims that were used to replace Townies, either as full Sims, or Townie makeovers.

I've been re-making Sims in-game using various InSiminator and similar hacks, but boy, is it a tedious process, nothing like the batch approach I was apparently using 20 years ago. And there's *so many* of the blasted buggers. I swear, more than half the Sims in my 'hood (1043, according to SimPE, including one who was born yesterday) are Townies or NPCs.

I'm wondering if there was some hack I used that let me exchange Sims in-game. Maybe some kind of mirror? I have a vague memory of something like that, but whatever it was erased the target Sim completely (down to the name in most cases), and replaced it with the new one, thus making no net change to the population of the 'hood. Am I hallucinating?

-- Mal

I don't know how you could batch change an entire group of sims, I do them one at a time slowly. I accidentally have doubled up townies because the first batch I put in I thought were not working so I put them in again.
What I do:
Grab them with Closet Gussy Up. I use the updated version by I think Midge. It's the version that includes season outerwear and toddlers. I do plastic surgery from that, change hair, accessories and set clothes.

I next change their name on this https://modthesims.info/d/289073/la...ier-080707.html You can do first and last names.

Then I grab the simblender and I randomize a few things like personality.

Later on once the game is closed I use CpackEditor to make the plastic surgery genetic. Way easier than SimPE for this and this one does do a batch of sims, so maybe you are thinking of this program.

If I wanted to change skin, hair or eye colour I would use SimPE but I rarely bother.

A sim is basically just a template and you can change just about everything about them to make a new sim. There is even a potion you can buy to change their gender.

You can change what family sims are in with any teleporter mod. You can make townies into playables just be moving them in with the regular game function.

Is changing the family all you need to do to make a sim a townie?

Yes, townies are just sims that are in the townie families.

Malthaussen, this is a very long shot indeed, but is it possible your former method had anything to do with the mod mentioned here (with specific instructions here )? It's ages since I tried that and I don't really remember any details, but I knew other simmers who used it all the time.

Not the way I did it, but it may have merit if I can keep the Archetype Sim in the Sims bin.

-- Mal