Like in previous versions it is possible to change either the appearance or the colour of the Star Ratings used in FM16, however the method to recolour them has changed in Football Manager 2016.
How to Recolour the Star Ratings
In Football Manager 2016 the colour of the star ratings is no longer set by the actual graphic, like the other skin graphics in the game the colours are now set by values declared in the settings file for the skin, the advantage of this is it makes it a whole lot easier and quicker to recolour the stars.
If you are using one of the Default Skins then you will first need to download and switch over to the relevant Base Skin.
Then inside the folder for the skin you are using should be a settings folder and inside this should be an xml file (ignore the one called config.xml the one you want will generally be called something like settings.xml, colours.xml or '<skin_name> settings.xml')
Now inside that xml file you want to locate the following lines of code:
<colour name="star rating senior" red="244" green="188" blue="0"/>
<colour name="star rating youth" red="183" green="188" blue="191"/>
<colour name="star rating unknown" red="28" green="28" blue="29"/>
<colour name="star rating empty" red="202" green="202" blue="202"/>
(Don't worry if these lines aren't present in the file for your skin as the skinner may not have included them, if that is the case just paste the above lines into the file).
These four lines of code control the colour fo the Star Ratings, the first line controls the Senior Star (Gold by default), the next line controls the Youth Star (Light Grey), the third line controls the Unknown Star (Black) and the final line controls the Empty Star (Dark Grey).
To adjust the colour you need to change the values for each component. Valid values range from 0 to 255, where 255,255,255 is white, 0,0,0 is black, 255,0,0 is red, 0,255,0 is green etc…
Next you need to know the RGB value of the colour you want, the easiest way to get this is from an image editing program. (Or you can use trial and error to get close to what you want, one thing I would suggest is avoid setting values to 255 as they can be a bit bright, using 248 or 240 tends to give a softer colour that looks better).
For example if you load up paint.net, and in the Colors panel at the bottom left click the more button to expand the panel and it will now show the RGB value of the selected colour and as you change the colour on the colour wheel you'll see the RGB values change.
Alternatively there is a colour picker included within the game – just go to Preferences -> Interface -> Skin Colours, then click on one of the existing colours and a colour selector pops up where you can select a colour and get its RGB value.
Then it is just a case of picking the colour values that you want.
Below I have included some example colours for you to use if you want.
To get these into the game all you need to do is to paste the following lines for the colour scheme you want to use into the settings file for your skin in place of the existing lines of code for the star ratings you want to replace, if the skin you are using doesn't already have a star rating colours set in the settings file then you can just paste these lines directly into the file.
NOTE: If you are using one of the default skins you will need to download and switch to the relevant Base Skin to change the star colours.
After you have pasted in the lines you want, load up the game and if you have the skin cache on turn it off from within the Preferences Menu and Reload your skin for the new colours to be read.
RED
<colour name="star rating senior" red="200" green="30" blue="40"/>
<colour name="star rating youth" red="220" green="175" blue="175"/>
<colour name="star rating unknown" red="100" green="30" blue="40"/>
<colour name="star rating empty" red="202" green="202" blue="202"/>
BLUE
<colour name="star rating senior" red="72" green="145" blue="220"/>
<colour name="star rating youth" red="175" green="192" blue="222"/>
<colour name="star rating unknown" red="0" green="32" blue="114"/>
<colour name="star rating empty" red="202" green="202" blue="202"/>
GREEN
<colour name="star rating senior" red="53" green="178" blue="96"/>
<colour name="star rating youth" red="175" green="220" blue="175"/>
<colour name="star rating unknown" red="0" green="73" blue="36"/>
<colour name="star rating empty" red="202" green="202" blue="202"/>
How To Change the Star Rating Images
NOTE: These instructions are for people who want to create their own new star images, if you are using a downloaded pack then follow the instructions included with them to install them.
Whilst the method to recolour the star ratings has changed it is still possible to replace the default stars with different images.
The first thing you will need to do is to extract the default Star Rating graphics which can be found in the following location within the skins.fmf file:
\skins\fm-widgets\graphics\icons\custom\star rating
Inside that folder will be three subfolders;
scouting - I don't think these are actually used any longer.
senior - controls the main star ratings. (also used for reputation stars).
youth - controls the youth star ratings.
Inside each of these folders you will notice several png graphics and an xml file for each of them.
The png files control the actual appearance of the stars and note that we no longer have images for each rating we just have one for each part, so for example a two star rating would use two full images and three empty ones, whilst a three star rating would use three full images and two empty images, when in the past you'd have had a unique image for the two star rating and another one for the three star rating.
The other thing to consider when making new star images is that you can only use the three colours (red, green and blue) used by the default files as the game will recolour these to the colours declared in the settings file.
By default the red colour is assigned to the known star, the green colour is assigned the unknown star and the blue is assigned to the empty star.
Regarding the xml files you shouldn't need to edit these as they just tell the game what colour names to assign the red/green/blue colours to, and whilst you can change what values these are assigned to it is best to just leave them assigned to the default values to save any confusion at a later date.
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