Base Skins for Football Manager 2010

As with FM2009 for you to make certain changes in FM2010 you need to create a new skin, whilst this has largely stayed the same as FM09, a couple of changes have been made to the settings file that controls the text colours and style. So to make things easier for people I've put up some base skins that are identical to the default skins that come with the game, so you can add new files/graphics to these without messing up the original skins, and anything that isn't located in these new skin folders will be taken from the default locations within the game.

If you have bought or installed FM2010 via Steam and have had patch 10.2.0 or later applied to your game you now have access to the FM2009 style skin, again to make things easier for people I have made a base version of the FM2009 skin (both left and right sided) below:

Instructions:

When you extract this file you should have two folders: base2010 and base2010 dark as well as this readme.txt file. If you have downloaded the FM09 style base skins for Steam then you will have a base2009 and a base2009r folder instead.

Now copy the two folders into your skins folder within your User Data Folder, by default this is:

For the full game:

\My Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2010\skins\

If you cannot find your User Data folder, load up the game and go into the preferences -> General Screen, at the bottom of the screen should be a section headed User Data Folder, there should be a folder location listed in the box, this is the location of your user data folder, if you browse to that location on your computer (not through FM) there should be a skins folder located within that folder, this is where you put your downloaded skins.

For example my User Data location is: F:\Michael\Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2010\ as shown by the below screenshot:

You can also change the location of your User Data folder if you wish or reset its location to default. (you’ll need to reload the game for it to take affect)

If done right your skins folder should look something like this:

When you load the game up if the skin cache is off they should appear in the skins menu like the below image:

If the skin cache is on you'll need to turn it off, select always reload skin and reload one of your existing skins, now the new skins should appear in the drop down menu.

To Replace Graphics

To replace the following graphics you need to copy the graphics you have made or downloaded into the correct folders within the folder for the skin you are using:

Gold Stars:

My Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2010\skins\<SKIN_NAME>\graphics\icons\stars\gold

Silver Stars:

My Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2010\skins\<SKIN_NAME>\graphics\icons\stars\silver

To get the 2D pitch icons (balls, nets, players) into the game they need to go into the following folders within your skin:

Balls:

My Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2010\skins\<SKIN_NAME>\graphics\pitch\balls\

Popups:

My Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2010\skins\<SKIN_NAME>\graphics\pitch\popup\

Nets:

My Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2010\skins\<SKIN_NAME>\graphics\pitch\nets\

Player Icons:

My Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2010\skins\<SKIN_NAME>\graphics\pitch\icons\kit\

For example if you were previously using the default FM10 skin and wanted to add some new 2D balls to the game you would add them to:

My Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2010\skins\base2010\graphics\pitch\pitch\balls\

And select the base2010 skin in game, and your new ball would show on the 2D pitch.

(NOTE: this is just for the classic 2D view, the 3D view graphics are controlled by different files)

To edit the fonts

The font settings for each skin are now controlled by the <SKIN_NAME> settings.xml file located inside the settings folder.

For the Base2010 skin this is the ‘\base2010\settings\base2010 settings.xml’ file

For the Base2010 Dark skin this is the ‘\base2010 dark\settings\base2010 dark settings.xml’ file

For the Base2009 skin this is the '\base2009\settings\base2009 settings.xml' file

For the Right Sided Base2009 skin this is the '\base2009r\settings\base2009r settings.xml' file

For the base skins I have copied in the relevant coding for you to change the various text settings – style, size etc, you just need to open the <SKIN_NAME> settings.xml file scroll down to the bottom of the file until you see the TEXT SETTINGS text and edit the relevant code below that line.

To change the actual font used by the game, you will first need to copy the relevant font file into the fonts folder for your skin and then change the font name in the settings file.

To edit the game colours

The colour settings for each skin are now controlled by the <SKIN_NAME> settings.xml file located inside the settings folder.

For the Base2010 skin this is the ‘\base2010\settings\base2010 settings.xml’ file

For the Base2010 Dark skin this is the ‘\base2010 dark\settings\base2010 dark settings.xml’ file

For the Base2009 skin this is the '\base2009\settings\base2009 settings.xml' file

For the Right Sided Base2009 skin this is the '\base2009r\settings\base2009r settings.xml' file

For the base skins I have copied in the relevant coding for you to change the various colours used by the skin – you just need to open the <SKIN_NAME> settings.xml file and locate the relevant line for the colour setting you wish to change – the colour names and comments should explain what the majority of the colours control.

The colours are declared in RGB values, that range from 0-255 where Red=255 Green=255 Blue=255 is white and Red=0 Green=0 Blue=0 is black.

To locate the RGB value of a colour you want to use you can either use a image editing program to obtain the RGB Value of the colour or type rgb values into google and it will bring up several websites that list the RGB Values for various colours.

To edit the Attribute Threshold

To edit the Attribute thresholds you need to edit the ‘player attributes panel.xml’ (for players) and ‘non player profile.xml’ (non-players) files that I have included in the panels folder for each of the base skins.

The code you need to change is this, which should appear at the top of the file:

<!-- attribute colouring -->

<integer id="exca" value="16" />

<!-- excellent threshold -->

<integer id="excn" value="11" />

<!-- normal threshold -->

<integer id="excl" value="6" />

<!-- low threshold -->

For your changes to take affect

If you have made any changes to the base skins (colours, fonts, graphics) to get your changes to show you’ll need to go into the Preferences -> Display & Sound Menu and untick ‘Use Skin Cache’ if it is ticked and then tick ‘Always Reload Skin On Confirm’ then click confirm and your changes should be applied.