Football Manager 2021 Light Alt Skin

Install Instructions

When you extract the file you have downloaded you should have a folder called lightalt21 and a readme text file.

Now copy the folder into your skins folder within your User Data Location, by default is:

For Windows:

C:\Users\[Your Windows Username]\Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2021\

For Mac:

Users\[Your Mac Username]\Library\Application Support\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2021

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/

4. If linking to my work then please provide a link to the download page rather than the download link as the download link may change.

If you have any questions then the best place to ask them is in the Skinning Hideout at the Official SIGames Forums where I can be found most days.

How To Stop the Blurring Effect when Processing

FM2016 introduced a new feature where when the main screen isn't the focus of the screen it blurs out, however if you don't like this effect it is simple enough to disable it, to do this simply browse to the following locations within the Base Skin you are using:

NOTE: For FM21 there are now two locations, so you may need to edit them both to disable the blurring.

\graphics\boxes\dialog\background

\graphics\boxes\bordered\blurred

Inside each location will be a paper xml file open them and locate this line:

<boolean id="blurred" value="true"/>

and change it to read:

<boolean id="blurred" value="false"/>

How To enable Background Changes

The Default FM21 skin somewhat supports background images this year however the fade effect and the transparent titlebar cause some issues, so I have included my Background Support Mod within the Skin.

To Adjust the Overlay Strength

To make things a little easier I have changed how to adjust the overlay strength in the light skin.

Rather than having to rename and make copies of the graphic files you can now adjust the strength via editing the client object browser xml file found in the panels\client_object folder for the skin.

In that file locate this line:

<widget class="bordered_box" appearance="boxes/custom/background/fade" red_replacement="background" scale_picture="true" keep_aspect_ratio="false">

And change the fade bit of the appearance line to the name of one of the files in that folder that has opacity you want.

The default options are; 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 75, 80, 90, 100, fade.

Where the number (and thus file name) correspond to the level of opacity you want - 0 gives you a transparent overlay and 100 gives you a solid overlay. Whilst fade gives you the default style fade affect.

For example to set an opacity of 50 you'd want the 50 file so you'd change the above line to read:

<widget class="bordered_box" appearance="boxes/custom/background/50" red_replacement="background" scale_picture="true" keep_aspect_ratio="false">

You then just need to save the file and reload your skin for the changes to apply, and if you don't like just pick a different value until you are happy.

How To Edit the Fonts

The font settings are now controlled by the various files located inside the fonts folder. To edit the fonts its just a case of changing the various variables declared in the fontxml files, whilst to change the actual font you copy the font you want to use to the font folder and then update the font names in the fontxml files to match your new font.

Like with FM20 FM21 also uses the fontxml file format, however the format of the files is the same and you can open them with the same program you use to read normal xml files, you'll just need to right click on the first file and select the open with option in Windows first to associate the files with the program you wish to use. NOTE: The game will not read them if you change them back to plain xml files.

How To Edit the Skin Colours

The colour settings are controlled by the lightalt21 settings xml file located inside the settings folder.

Re-colouring items for the Light Skin is largely the same as for the normal Base Skins, however I have adopted parts of the Template System I used with FM20 which should make it easier to change various items as I've linked some more bits together and added several custom colours that allow you to check more colours directly from the settings file (though I didn't get a chance to convert all the colours over to the Template system so you'll still need to delve into the panel files to alter some things).

For the majority of users changing the colours is the same as normal - locate the item you want to change in the settings file and change the value part to match the new colour you want to use, the main difference is that it is now important where in the file certain items are located, but if you are just recolouring items then this shouldn't really matter.

Full details on how to use the Template System for the Light Skin can be found here.

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 -> Interface Menu and untick Use caching to decrease page loading times if it is ticked and then tick Reload skin when confirming changes in Preferences then click confirm and your changes should be applied, if you have previously ticked and unticked the required boxes a Reload Skin button should appear in the bottom left corner, if this button appears you can click that if the Confirm Button is greyed out.