Football Manager 2016: How to Add Custom Trophy Images

A new feature for FM2016 is the ability to assign custom trophy images to actual competitions.

Like with faces, kits and logos to add trophies to the game you need an image graphic of your trophy and a config xml file.

How to Create the Trophy Graphic

The style of graphic used for the trophy doesn't really matter, (no doubt graphic makers will soon make various different styles for you to choose from) the licensed images included with the game use cut-out style images (like the player faces), if you want some instructions on how to create cut-out images then you can have a look at this old guide I made for player faces.

When creating the graphic the best thing to do is to try and obtain the largest and cleanest image you can as they are the easiest to work from.

The dimensions of the final image aren't that important as like with the other graphics the game now scales them to the size it needs.

The default images are 180x180 pixels, however if you can I'd make them bigger say 360x360 pixels so they are upscaled better if someone is playing zoomed in or a skinner makes them appear larger in the skins.

When saving your images you want to save them as png files with transparency enabled if an option.

Filenames are up to you but it is best to avoid non-english characters, special characters, captial letters or spaces. The easiest thing to do is to name them by their competitions id as that will also make creating the config files easier.

The Config Entry

The entry you need to add to your config file is as follows:

<record from ="<FILE_NAME>" to="graphics/pictures/comp/<UNIQUE_ID>/trophy"/>

Where;

<FILE_NAME> is the name of the graphic you are adding.

<UNIQUE_ID> is the in-game id of the competition you want to link the image to. This is the same ID you would use if adding a logo to the competition.

For example the below line would link a graphic called 'prem' to the English Premier League trophy:

<record from ="prem" to="graphics/pictures/comp/11/trophy"/>

If you haven't created a config file before then have a read of this guide.

Where To Place Your Image

Trophy images are placed in the same place as your kits, logos and faces. They should be placed inside the graphics folder within your User Data Location, provided they are inside your graphics folder and are in the same folder as the config file you can freely place them in as many subfolders as you like (for example graphics\trophies\europe\england would work).

Unless you have changed it your User Data Location will be located in one of the following places:

Windows

C:\Users\[Your Windows Username]\Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2016\

Mac

/Users/[Your Mac Username]/Documents/Sports Interactive/Football Manager 2016/

Linux

/home/documents/Sports Interactive/FM2016/

Then load the game and from the Preferences -> Interface menu untick 'Use caching to decrease page loading times' and tick 'Reload skin when confirming changes in Preferences' Then click Confirm and if done right your trophy images should display. (Once they are displaying you can undo this step)

Below is an example where I have assigned the FM2016 logo to appear as the trophy for the English Premier League:

---
Redistribution Terms

You are free to post this content to your website provided:

1. It is not sold or behind a paywall.
2. You don't advertise it as being exclusive to your website.
3. My username and blog address are included: http://michaeltmurrayuk.blogspot.co.uk/

Football Manager 2016 - Locating and Changing your User Data Location

If you have played the Football Manager 2016 Beta you may have noticed that the Preferences menu no longer lists or allows you to change your User Data (Saving) Location, this feature was removed from the game because it was confusing people.

Your User Data (Saving) Location is the place on your hard drive where user generated content is stored, this includes data generated by the game such as save games, tactics and shortlists. It also includes graphics (kits, logos, faces etc) and skins that you may have downloaded or created.

Locating Your User Data Location

Your User Data Location will be found in one of the following locations depending on which Operating System your computer is using:

Windows

C:\Users\[Your Windows Username]\Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2016\

Mac

/Users/[Your Mac Username]/Documents/Sports Interactive/Football Manager 2016/

Linux

/home/documents/Sports Interactive/FM2016/

Once you have located your User Data Location the process for installing skins and graphics is the same as previous versions, however this time around the game should create the graphics and skins subfolders for you to make things slightly easier. 

How To Change Your User Data Location

Even though the ability to change your User Data Location from within the game has been removed it is still possible to manually change it's location.

(NOTE: You only need to follow the below instructions if you want to move the location, these instructions aren't needed to just add content to the game if you want to just use the default location)

In FM2016 you now need to add a command line to the game launch options.

To do this follow the instructions below:

- Go into Steam -> Library -> Games view.

- Located Football Manager 2016 and right-click on the game.
- Select 'Properties'
- Click 'Set Launch Options...'
- Copy the following into the dialogue box: --user_data_location="<path>"
- In the <path> section, enter the exact path you wish the folder to be generated (ie D:\Users\ etc)

So for example if you wanted your Saving Location to be S:\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2016

You would add the following text to the dialogue box:

--user_data_location="S:\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2016"

So your Launch Options box should look something like this:

Note that this folder location needs to already exist on your hard drive before setting the launch option, then when you next launch FM2016 the game will automatically generate the needed subfolders (such as graphics, games and skins).

If done correctly the contents of your custom User Data Location should look something like this after having run the game with the launch option set:

Also note that if you have any already created anything in game with the default location set (such as save games, shortlists, or tactics) you will need to manually copy the items over to your new location.

To reset your Saving Location to the default position you just need to delete the command line and on your next restart of FM16 the game will go back to using the default location. (Again you'll need to maunaly copy over any existing files from your old custom location to the default location for them to be read by the game).

Football Manager 2016 Beta Released

The Pre-Release Beta of Football Manager 2016 has now been released to those of you who have pre-ordered a digital copy from the selected retailers. 

I am in the process of checking what has been changed from a skinning, modding and graphics point in FM2016 and should have some information out over the next few days.

For the moment the most up-to-date information can be found in the Skinning Forum on the Official Sports Interactive Forums.

From a quick look it looks like logos, kits and player faces all haven't changed and as such you should still be able to use last year graphics.

Skins as always won't work and you will have to wait for the skin makers to update or release new skins.

Football Manager 2015 Skinning Guide Part 5: Editing the xml files

Welcome to the fifth part of my updated Skinning Guide for FM2015.

Before reading this guide make sure you have read the previous parts of the guide as well as the extracting files guide, as this guide will assume you have followed those guides.

The previous parts of the guide talked you through creating a new skin, changing the fonts, changing some of the font settings and colours, with the last part detailing how to change the skin graphics.

This part of the guide will talk you through some of the basics of how the xml files work. Due to how Football Manager works it isn't possible to give you a full guide on how to edit the xml files however this guide should give you some basic information to get you started. I also have some more detailed posts on this forum/my website that talk you through modifying certain screens and if you combine those guides with the basics learned here you should get a good understanding of how the xml coding in Football Manager works, after that the best way to learn is just from the experience of looking through and editing the xml files.

Editing the xml files is fairly simple once you know where to start and as such it doesn't actually require any coding experience, though some very very basic knowledge of coding or even webpage editing will give you a quicker start (even the simple knowledge of how to manually format your posts when posting on the forum is all you really need to start with).

You should also only rarely need to actually write your own xml code, most if not all of your xml editing will involve copying code from one place/file to another to change where it displays or will involve deleting of some code if you want to hide certain things, so you mainly need to know how the code links together and what is part of the same code. The hardest thing you'll probably have to do is to adjust the code you copied so it matches the format of the existing code as the code can change slightly depending on where and how it's displayed.

Before starting I advise you have the following folder locations open:

-          Your 'Working' Folder Location from the previous guide (which is where you extracted the default game files to).

-          The my_first_skin folder within your Saving Location.

You will also need to have your preferred xml file editor open as well as FM2015.

Football Manager 2016 Release Date Announced

Bit of a late announcement but if you haven't heard Football Manager 2016 is due for release on 13th November 2015 with a pre-release Beta available around two weeks before release to people who pre-order the digital version from select retailers.

The plan at the moment is to try and get my mods, skins and guides up dated for FM2016 over the full release weekend, though exact timing will depend on how much needs updating. I am not planning on releasing anything during the Beta period as I don't know when or if I'll have access to it and things may change between the beta and release meaning the work would need to be redone anyway. 

I should also over this weekend have finished the latest part of my FM2015 Skinning Guide, which should leave me time to get another one or two parts done if needed before FM16 is out, and then it is a case of updating it all for FM16.

FM2015 Skinning Guide Part 4: Editing the Skin Graphics

Welcome to the fourth part of my updated Skinning Guide for FM2015.

Before reading this guide make sure you have read the previous parts of the guide as well as the extracting files guide, as this guide will assume you have followed those guides.

The previous parts of the guide talked you through creating a new skin and then changing the fonts and some of the font settings, before telling you how to change most of the text colour.

This part of the guide will talk you through how to change the appearance of the actual skin graphics.
As it is fairly long I have also included a quick recap at the end.

Before starting I advise you have the following folder locations open:

-          Your 'Working' Folder Location from the previous guide (which is where you extracted the default game files to).

-          The my_first_skin folder within your Saving Location.

You will also need to have your preferred xml file editor and image editing programs open as well as FM2015.

FM2015 Skinning Guide Part 3: Changing the Text Colours

Welcome to the third part of my updated Skinning Guide for FM2015. 

Before reading this guide make sure you have read the previous parts of the guide as well as the extracting files guide, as this guide will assume you have followed those guides.

The previous parts of the guide talked you through creating a new skin and then changing the fonts and some of the font settings, this part of the guide will explain how to change the colours of most of the text in the game.

Before starting I advise you have the following folder locations open:

•           Your 'Working' Folder Location from the previous guide (which is where you extracted the default game files to)

•           The my_first_skin folder within your Saving Location.

Some housekeeping

Before we start we need to do some housekeeping.

First browse to the my_first_skin folder within your Saving Location and open the settings folder then open the 'my_first_skin settings.xml' and delete the contents of the file as the font settings located in that file aren't used with FM2015 and are just leftover from previous versions.

Once that is done you want to paste the following code into the file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<properties version="1.0">

</properties>

So the file should look like this:

Locating the default colours

Before you start changing the colours you first need to locate where the default text colours are stored, these are located in the xml files located within the various settings folders.

The first location you need to check are the folders for the parent skin to your skin, if you cannot remember which parent skin you set then open the skin_config.xml file located within the my_first_skin folder and locate the parent line that looks like this:

<flags id="parent" value="fm dark-widgets" />

In this case the parent skin we need to look in is 'fm dark-widgets'

So in your Working folder now browse to the skins\fm dark-widgets\settings folder.

In that folder will be an xml file called 'fm dark-widgets settings' this file contains the colour settings that are unique to this skin. If your skin has a different parent skin the settings file may be blank or not exist, if that is the case you will then have to look in the files for that skins parent skin.

However the colour settings are also stored elsewhere, if you go back to your Working Folder you will see a settings folder. This folder contains two more xml files that we are interested in 'colours' and 'fm colours'.

So we now have three files that control the skin colours and you will notice that some of the lines located in the 'colours' and 'fm colours' files are also present in the 'fm dark-widgets settings' file but with different values. This is because the game works on a file hierarchy.

The game will first look in in the 'fm dark-widgets settings' file for the colour name if it finds the value it will use the value from that file, if it doesn't find the value only then will it look in the 'colours' and 'fm colours' files. So when copying values over to edit always look in the settings file first and only move onto the colour files if you cannot find the colour name you are looking for.

If you want a shortcut then you can download one of the base skins and look inside the settings file for the base skin where I have already copied all the default colours for each skin into one file to save you having to locate them yourself.

Changing the text colours

Now that you have located the default values, to change the colours you just need to locate the relevant colour name and copy it into the settings file for your skin.

But before we get to that there is one other thing you need to consider. Football Manager 2015 made changes to how the skin graphics are coloured, instead of taking the colour of the graphic like in the past the skin graphic colours are now also set by these same three files, which means you have to be a bit careful when copying and changing the colours as some of the colour names will apply to skin graphics not the text and unfortunately the coding for both is exactly the same, though I'll cover the full details of how to edit the graphic colours in a later guide for now you just need to be aware that the code in these files doesn't just control the text colours.

The settings for the skin graphics are set at the top of the 'fm dark-widget settings' file, whilst the text settings start after this line of code (line #172):

<!-- misc "special" colours -->

As a simple example I am going to show you how to change the player attribute colours, the player attributes are controlled by these lines from the 'fm dark-widgets settings' file:

<!-- profile attribute colours -->
<colour name="low attribute" red="250" green="250" blue="250" alpha="140"/>
<colour name="normal attribute" red="250" green="250" blue="250" alpha="200"/>
<colour name="good attribute" red="159" green="220" blue="122" />
<colour name="excellent attribute" red="122" green="199" blue="75" />

Now locate those lines yourself and paste them into the 'my_first_skin settings' file. Now when pasting the code into the file you need to ensure the code is pasted between the two properties bits of code like below:

If you paste the code into the wrong place the game won't read the code and may flash up an error message when you reload the skin, if it does then just click ok on the message, fix the xml file, save the changes and then reload the skin.

Now that we have copied the relevant bits of code over we need to recolour the code, this is done in exactly the same way as shown in the previous guide, however instead of each colour getting its own line of code all three colours are on the same line.

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…

The alpha value affects how transparent the colour is, 255 gives you a solid colour, where 0 makes the text completely transparent.

To change the text colour you need to know the RGB value of the colour you want, the easiest way to get this is from an image editing program.

So 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.

As a simple exercise I am going to ask you to change the attribute colours to match the colours used for the player positions, so change the low attribute to match the poor position, the normal attribute to the awkward colour, good to unconvincing and excellent to competent (you should be able to locate the RGB values for the positions from the code located within the 'fm dark-widgets settings' file).

If done correctly your player attributes should now look something like this:

In the above screenshot you'll see that the text font and colour is still set from the previous guide, don't worry if you have undone those changes as they make no difference here.

To change the colour of other bits of text you just do the same, you just need to locate the relevant colour name for the text you want recoloured, copy it over and adjust the values.

The hardest thing is finding the correct colour name, whilst most are commented or named in a way that it makes it clear what they affect, some bits can be controlled by obscure values.

If you cannot find the relevant colour name then have a look on the forum as someone else may have already asked the same thing, if not then just open a thread and ask and hopefully someone will have the answer.

Also note that for some items you have to edit the xml for that panel to change the colour, however this will be covered in a later part of the guide.

You can also download a copy of this guide in several different formats for offline viewing:

DOWNLOAD PDF FORMAT GUIDE                                        DOWNLOAD DOCX FORMAT GUIDE

---
Redistribution Terms

You are free to post this content to your website provided:

1. It is not sold or behind a paywall.
2. You don't advertise it as being exclusive to your website.
3. My username and blog address are included: http://michaeltmurrayuk.blogspot.co.uk/

If linking to the guide please link to this page rather than the direct download links as the links may change with updates.