How To Recolour the Star Ratings

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, colours, or <skin_name> settings)

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 of 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.

Example Colours

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"/>