Want to change a bunch of downtownies into townies, or a bunch of playables into downtownies, or a bunch of social sims into playables, or….
All of these options require the same simple change in SimPE, and I’ll show you how to do it. This tute assumes you know your way around SimPE well enough to load your hood and find the resources you need.
The change you’ll make is to the FAMI, the Family Instance, the number that determines which family a sim is placed in. Obviously, you know that the Goths are a family, as are the Ottomai, but, you may not have realized that other types of sims are families, too. Service sims, ancestors, downtownies, Gearheads…. they are each just a certain family, each with a certain number.
Changing families can be done in a number of ways: with cheats, with mods, with play methods like moving sims in and out again, but all are really just changing the FAMI which can also be done very easily in SimPE. This tute is written to show how to change downtownies into townies, but the method is the same for any FAMI change. Caution: This works quite well for groups of sims, but, as always, back up. I wouldn’t use this method for my playables in regular families, unless I first thoroughly back up and test the changes, first.
The first thing you’ll need to know is which FAMI numbers you want. Regular playable sims all have numbers assigned for their families as they are created. They’ll have nice normal numbers like 1, 2, 3….
The sims that play a certain role, like our NPCs and Gearheads, have their FAMI numbers listed here. So, for our example, from the list, you can see that all the downtownies should have the FAMI 7FFC and we’ll want them to have the townie FAMI, 7FFE.
So, let’s get started.
Step 1
After backing up and loading your hood, look in the FAMI for downtownies. They will have some random last name, so ID them by the FAMI number. When you find the downtownie family, choose a specific downtownie to change. 
Step 2
Look up the downtownie in the Sim Descriptions to change her FAMI from Downtownie FAMI …
3. to the Townie FAMI. Change the number and commit.
4. Back in the FAMI, delete the sim from the downtownies and commit.
5. Go to the FAMI for townies, use the dropdown to add the sim to the townies. Commit and save.
6. If you followed the steps, you’re done with that sim. If you want to check your work, save and reload the hood and check to see if she is where she should be by finding her in the Neighborhood Memory resource.
Once you’ve done one or two and are comfortable, it’s fine to do all the FAMI changes at once, deletions at once, additions at once, etc. If you mess up… you backed up, right?
SimScience Bonus
Way back, I discovered a great use for this modification… I found I could safely “disappear” sims I don’t want in play as long as I have a place that I’m not playing to send them….
Here’s how it works:
Say, I created a desert island hood before I knew how to disable townies and now my isolated island of isolation is crawling with townies passing by my “isolated” island hut. Not cool. But… I don’t have a downtown attached because… why would I? Well, I can change all those unwanted townies into downtownies, and they will nicely, safely disappear from play. They aren’t deleted. There’s no corruption. In fact, if I ever want to bring them back, I can. But, as long as they are in the downtownies FAMI, and there is no Downtown attached, they simply won’t show up in the game. Clever, huh? I thought so. 🙂