Football Manager 2022 Base Skins
As with most recent Football Managers for you to make certain changes in Football Manager 2022 you need to create a new skin. Thankfully over the last few years some more stuff has been moved out of the skins folder so you only really need the Base skin if you are wanting to edit the skin graphics, fonts or colours. If you want to edit the match graphics or the most of the panel xml files you no longer really need the base skins.
So to make things easier for people I've put up a base skin that is identical to the default skin that comes with the game, so you can add new files/graphics to these without messing up the original skin, and anything that isn't located in these new skin folders will be taken from the default locations within the game.
For Football Manager 2022 there is just the one Base Skin based on the Default Skin which is the Dark verison this year, it is also possible that I may release a couple of alternative versions with different accent colours after the full release if I get a chance.
A Light Skin will follow but again with no default light skin this year it requires more work, but should be quicker than last year.
Base22 Skin
This skin is based on the Default Football Manager 2021 Skin, and is identical in appearance to that skin. Though I have made two tweaks to the Player Profile screen, increasing the size of the badge and face on the attributes panel and re-enabling the Reports option in the Small Selector panels.
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.
If you like my work then feel free to send me a donation through paypal. Note this is completely optional all of my content will always be free.
Installation Instructions
When you extract the file you have downloaded you should have one folder named base22 and a readme text file.
Now copy the folder into your skins folder within your User Data Location, by default this 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
If done right your skins folder should look something like this:
And inside for example the base22 folder you should have the following folders:
To select the skin in game you will need to load the game, and go into the Preferences Menu, then in the middle you should have a section called Interface and in that is an option called Skin with a drop-down menu under it.
If you select the drop-down menu it should list all of the skins you have installed, if the skin you want is listed then just select it and press the Confirm button to load it.
If the skin you want isn't showing.
Then you can either select the Advanced option on the left and on the top right drop down select Interface, then scroll down the Skin section and untick Use caching to decrease loading times and tick Reload skin when confirming changes in Preferences.
Or in the search bar at the top type in Skin and in the listed results untick Use caching to decrease loading times and tick Reload skin when confirming changes in Preferences.
Then click Confirm at the bottom, this should then take you out of the Preferences menu but if you re-enter, it should have refreshed the list of skins and your skin should now be in the list.
Once the skin is loaded you can turn the skin cache back on and untick the Always Reload button.
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
Whilst the FM22 Default Skin supports background changes their are some issues with the transparency of some screens, so I have again included some improved background support in the Base Skin.
To Adjust the Transparency of Screens
This year I have again reworked how to tweak the transparency of the files, so this year it is instead done through editing the xml files rather than messing around with graphics which should make things easier and give you some better control.
The main file you need to edit is the client object browser xml file found in the panels\client_object folder for the skin.
In that file there are three bits of code you are interested in and I am going to work bottom up;
The main line you need to edit is the content box this forms the header and the main area of the skin, however it doesn't cover the sidebar and this code should be located on Line #56:
<widget class="inner_contrast_box" appearance="boxes/custom/interface/content/paper" transparency="1.0"> <!-- content -->
The second bit of code is for the background pattern, this pattern covers the top left and top right parts of the screen, it also covers the top half of the sidebar and this code should be located on Line #43:
<widget class="picture" file="boxes/custom/interface/background pattern/paper" id="BgPa" transparency="1.0"> <!-- pattern -->
The final bit of code in this file is the overlay I have added, this file covers the entire background including the sidebar and is for when you need an overlay to also cover the sidebar, and this code should be located on Line #30:
<widget class="picture" file="boxes/bordered/solid/paper" red_replacement="bg" transparency="0.0"> <!-- overlay -->
On each of those lines you'll notice this bit of code transparency="X.X" this code controls how transparent the graphic is - 1.0 means you have a solid graphic (well as solid as the actual graphic is) and 0.0 means it is entirely transparent - so by default I have set the content and pattern files to solid so they show as the graphic appears, whilst the extra overlay is set to transparent as it isn't needed by default.
All you need to do is adjust these values to suit, then save the file and reload the skin and repeat until you are happy.
Whilst another screen you may want to edit is the inbox which has it's own content graphic, so to edit this you need to edit the inbox item xml file found in the panels\human folder and in that file locate this line (#8):
<container class="main_contrast_box" red_replacement="inbox_content_background" transparency="1.0">
And again adjust the transparency to suit.
Those above options should cover the main areas, for other areas it is just a case of finding the file and line of code that controls the graphic in question and adding the transparency code.
How To Edit The Fonts
The font settings are now controlled by the various files located inside the fonts folder. For the base skins I have included all the default font files to save you having to go look for them. 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.
Whilst FM22 also uses the fontxml file format, 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 Font or Game Colours
The colour settings for each skin are controlled by the base22 settings xml file located inside the settings folder.
For the base skin I have copied in the relevant coding for you to change the various colours used by the skin – you just need to open the base22 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.
The game also includes a selection of palette colours you can select which is handy if you cannot settle on an exact RGB value. The palette colours use the colours from the Material UI Colours palette which you can reference here: https://materialui.co/colors/
To use these you need the name and number - name tells the game what colour to use and the number corresponds to the shade, so red 100 is a light red whilst red 900 is a dark red.
Note that whilst this file contains most of the text colour settings, some items are hardcoded, others are determined by the individual xml files and some others are set by the xml files in the fonts folder.
Also if you have the Skin Cache on you can change some of the colours directly through the game from the Preferences -> Interface-> Skin Colours screen
How To Apply Your Changes
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.