I'm looking to see if there's a way I can edit genetics in game without SimPE.

As such, I'm wondering if there's a way I can execute the steps that I would carry out in SimPE to achieve the desired result (by editing values or replacing files) which would be triggered by something like a pie-menu option being selected, or pressing confirm on the change appearance window for example rather than actually manually going into SimPE and changing it yourself.

For example, if I wanted to make a hair colour change genetic:

- Open change appearance window via a mirror and change hair colour from black to red. Press confirm.
- The mod kicks in and edits the Sim's file containing their DNA to reflect the new hair colour, changing the genetic value for hair colour from 1 (black) to 4 (red).

This could of course be achieved by going into their SimDNA section and changing the hair colour value under dominant gene from 1 to 4 manually. But I want to learn how to have it taken care of in the game without user intervention. Is such a thing possible? I think it would involve finding the code that applies the changes from the change appearance window then adding a new custom step that applies it to genetics too.

I don't have much experience in mods apart from some basic clothing recategorising and face template replacements years ago, so a pointer in the right direction would be very helpful. It feels like something that should be pretty straightforward once I understand how to do it, but I'm not sure where to start or what sort of files I need to source with SimPE. The hair colour thing is just an example and feels like a good starting point to learn how to do it.

Genetics are *mostly* not moddable using regular game mods, which is why we don't have many mods that affect genetics.

That's interesting... Do you know why that is? It feels like it should be so simple from a programming point of view...

When change is made -> update value in genetic code which is easily done in SimPE.

It's simple, but the game's engine just doesn't provide a way for modders to do that. There is no operation that allows you to set the sim's genes.

It's however possible to do that via file editing tools like SimPE.

LazyDuchess was working on a tool called TS2Hook which would give us access to internal game functions, which could enable changing genetics in-game, but I don't know if he still plans to finish that.