Welcome to my Football Manager Blog, the main purpose of this blog is to provide updates on the status of my Football Manager Skins & Guides Website

If you have any questions or queries then I can generally be found in the Skinning Forum at the Official Sports Interactive Forums, though I'd ask you to open a new thread rather than sending me a message.

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Friday 7 November 2014

FM2015 Guide - How To Edit the Sidebar


The new sidebar in Football Manager 2015 can be edited in various ways, the following instructions will allow you to edit the width, colour and text properties of the sidebar, though with some further experimenting it may be possible to do more things, however this should at least give people a starting place.


Before you start you will need a couple of things;

- If you are using the Default skins, then first download the Base Skins as any changes you make will need to be applied to them rather than the default skins, if you are using a downloaded skin then you should be able to edit that skin directly.

- You will need to make sure there are a couple of files located in the panels folder of the skin you are editing these are;

'client object browser.xml' - if not present obtain from the \skins\fm\panels folder (skins\fmc\panels for an FMC skin) extracted from the skins.fmf file.
'sidebar menu table.xml' - if editing the text values, if not present obtain from the panels.fmf file.

If you need to extract these files, once extracted copy them into the panels folder of the skin you are editing.


To Change the Width of the Sidebar


The Width of the Sidebar is controlled by the 'client object browser.xml' file you want to locate the following line of code (Line #30): 

<attachment class="test_screen_size_attachment" alignment="horizontal" min_value="0" max_value="1200" set_property="widt" true_value="45" false_value="160"/>

min_value="0" and max_value="1200" - Determine between which values the small icon only sidebar appears at (or the true_value sidebar), with default code the icon sidebar appears when window width is between 0 and 1,119 pixels, whilst the full sidebar will appear if you window width is 1,200 pixels or greater.

true_value="45" - At first glance controls the width of the icon sidebar, but really controls the width of the sidebar when your screen width is between the set min and max_values.

false_value="160" - At first glance controls the width of the full sidebar, but really controls the width of the sidebar when your screen width is outside of the min and max_values.

You can adjust these values to set the sidebar up in different ways.

If you want the full sidebar to always appear then you can set the max_value to zero, if you always want the icon sidebar to appear then set the max_value to something above the max. width your screen supports.

Alternatively you can set both true_value and false_value to the same value to stop them from being resized, if you set these values to a value below 125 with the default text settings then only the icon will appear, if you set them to a value above 125 the full sidebar will appear so setting the values to:

true_value="45" false_value="45" - This will always display the icon sidebar.

true_value="160" false_value="160" - This code will always display the full sidebar.

If you want the change when the full and icon sidebars appear then you just need to play around with the min_value and max_value values, so for example if you wanted the icon sidebar to appear at any width below 1,680 then you'd change the max_value code to read max_value="1680", you can also if you wanted have the full sidebar appear at 1,024 width, and 1920 width with the icon sidebar appearing inbetween by setting the code to: min_value="1025" max_value="1919"


To Stop the Sidebar being recoloured on team screens

Inside the settings folder for your skin you need to create a file called 'accent colours.xml' and paste into the file the following code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE propertylist SYSTEM "http://www.sigames.com/dtds/properties.dtd">

<properties version="1.0">

<list id="items">

<!-- All Colours -->
<record min_hue="0" max_hue="360" min_saturation="0" max_saturation="100" min_lightness="0" max_lightness="100">
<colour id="accent_colour" red="0" green="0" blue="0" alpha="255"/>
</record>

</list>

</properties>


If the skin you are using (such as an FMC skin) already has this file present then replace the existing code with the above code.

Alternatively you can download this file and put it into your settings folder for your skin if you don't want to create the file yourself, however you will still need to follow the below steps to adjust the colour.

You then need to adjust the red, green and blue levels on the bolded line to what colour you want the sidebar to appear (current values will set the sidebar to pure black), if you want the sidebar to have some transparency then lower the alpha value, if you want the sidebar to always be the same colour then set this value to the same as you set the non-club sidebar to in the below step.

The record line of this code tells the game if it detects a colour between those set ranges (with the ranges set covering all possible colours) to recolour it to the value declared in the colour row.

If you wish to set various colours then you can extract the default 'accent colours.xml' file from the settings.fmf file and play around with that.

Please note when creating/making any changes to this file reloading your skin in game will not refresh these values, if the game is running whilst you create this file or modify it you will need to exit and restart the game for the changes to be reflected in game.


To Change the Default Colour of the Sidebar

You will need to locate this line of code in the settings\<skin name> settings.xml file for your skin: 

<!-- it's a non-human object - so go this colour for for the sidebar background-->
<colour name="colour side bar" red="35" green="35" blue="145" alpha="255"/>

If it isn't present in your file paste the above code into the file, then to adjust the colour just alter the RGB values, whilst the alpha value affects how transparent the sidebar is, a value of 255 is solid, whilst 0 sets it to full transparency, values inbetween will give it various degrees of transparency.


To Edit the Sidebar Text

The settings for the text of the sidebar is located in the 'sidebar menu table.xml' file, in that code you will see various lines of code that look like this: 

<record id="column_properties" alignment="left,centre_y" colour="match text" size="10.1"/>

There will be one line that controls the club sidebar, one for nation sidebar and another if you are unemployed, you then just need to edit the values on thise page to suit, you can also add other bits of text code found elswhere to adjust the style of the text further.







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