How To Add a Picture to your Manager

Like with FM17 Football Manager 2018 no longer allows you to add a picture to your manager instead encouraging you to use the Facegen system. However last years mod still works so at the moment you can add a manager picture with a bit of work though it may be disabled again in a patch and still has the same limitations as last year - can only be added when creating a profile and you cannot change it afterwards.

Introduction

Like with FM17 Football Manager 2018 no longer allows you to add a picture to your manager instead encouraging you to use the Facegen system. However last years mod still works so at the moment you can add a manager picture with a bit of work though it may be disabled again in a patch and still has the same limitations as last year.

Thanks to some work from Cyrius50 at www.manager-online.fr it is now possible to add a Manager Picture when adding your Manager to the game, however at the moment it isn't possible to apply the picture to existing profiles nor to change the image so make sure you are happy with it before applying it.

Installation Instructions

After downloading and extracting the below zip file you should have a folder called panels.

If you are using the default skins:

- Place the panels folder into your User Data Location which by default is:
Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2018\

If you are using a custom skin:

- Place the panels folder inside the folder for the skin you are using, by default this will be:
Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2018\skins\<skin_name>\

If you are asked to overwrite any files then you are best checking the manual instructions further down as it means the skin you are using has already customized the file used so you'll need to modify the file yourself.

- Next load up the game and if the skin cache is on turn it off and reload your skin, then follow the below steps to add your picture. (Once you have confirmed the Add Picture box has appeared you can turn the skin cache back on).

Manager Picture Mod Download Page[sites.google.com]

How To Add Your Manager Picture

When you have installed the mod on the Add Manager panel select either Edit Profile or New Profile, then on the Profile screen you should see a new option below the Social Networks as in the below picture:


Clicking on 'Choose Picture' should take you to the file select popup, from here browse to the location on your hard drive where your image is selected and select the image, in the below example I have selected an image of the FM18 logo.


Once that is done fill in the rest of your profile as normal and continue through the profile settings and once you are into the game your image should now be showing:


Again this method has it's limitations:

- You cannot assign a picture to an existing manager, if you want an existing manager to have a picture you would need to retire that manager and create a new one to take over but you won't be able to keep any of your in-game progress.

- It isn't possible to change the image after the profile has been created so make sure you are happy with the image before you get too far into your game. Whilst you can now edit your manager in game this feature doesn't allow you to change the profile picture nor will editing the face here override the set picture.

- Also be aware this feature is unsupported and might be removed again if the game gets another patch, also I have only tested to see if the image will appear I have no idea if it will cause any issues further into the game, so it is used at your own risk.

How To Create The Mod

NOTE: You only need to follow these instructions if you want to create the mod for yourself or are using a skin that has already modified this file, if you just want to use the mod then download the file from the top of the guide.

To create the mod for Football Manager 2018 you will need to extract the 'add manager profile panel' xml file from the panels\human folder found inside the panels.fmf file if you don't know how to extract the default files then have a read of this guide[sites.google.com].

Once you have extracted the 'add manager profile panel' xml file you will need to copy it into the panels\human folder for the skin you are using (if those folders don't exist just create them).

Now there are a few changes we need to make to that file so open the file and locate the following line of text ( Line #32):

<layout class="grid_layout_attachment" row_layout="20,30,22,20,30,22,20,30,22,20,30,1,20,30,30,60" mode="auto" vertical_gap="5" vertical_offset_start="40" vertical_offset_end="0">

That line tells the game how many rows to display on the Add Manager Profile Screen, so what we need to do is add another row for the manager picture content, so change that line to read:

<layout class="grid_layout_attachment" row_layout="20,30,22,20,30,22,20,30,22,20,30,1,20,30,30,60,30" mode="auto" vertical_gap="5" vertical_offset_start="40" vertical_offset_end="0">

As you can see we have added another row to the row_layout code, you can change this number to something else if you want the row height to be different.

Now if you scroll down a bit you will see a load of code that looks like this:

<record>
<string id="column_layout" value="-1,-1,-1" />
<integer id="horizontal_offset" value="20" />
<integer id="horizontal_gap" value="5" />
</record>
</list>
</layout>

This code tells the game how to layout the columns in the row, so again we need to add some code to get the Manager Picture code to display so change that code to read:

<record>
<string id="column_layout" value="-1,-1,-1" />
 <integer id="horizontal_offset" value="20" />
<integer id="horizontal_gap" value="5" />
</record>
                           
<record>
<string id="column_layout" value="-1,-1,-2" />
<integer id="horizontal_offset" value="20" />
<integer id="horizontal_gap" value="5" />
</record>
</list>
</layout>

The Bold code we have added tells the game how to layout the columns, the string line tells the game how many columns there are on the row and how wide they should be, so you can see from this there are three columns, whilst the negative numbers tell the game to set the widths by ratio instead of using fixed numbers, so in this case the first two columns take up 1/4 of the space and the last column takes up the last half, again you can adjust these values to different ratios or absolute numbers if you want.

Now we have set up the table we need to add the actual coding to call the Manager Picture, now scroll down to the bottom of the file where you should find this code:

<widget class="icon_button" id="yoib" icon="icons/48px/youtube" icon_alignment="centre" click_event="yoDI" />
<widget class="icon_button" id="tcib" icon="icons/48px/twitch" icon_alignment="centre" click_event="tcDI" />
<widget class="icon_button" id="faib" icon="icons/48px/facebook" icon_alignment="centre" click_event="faDI" />
<widget class="icon_button" id="twib" icon="icons/48px/twitter" icon_alignment="centre" click_event="twDI" />

And what we need to do underneath that code on Line #299 is paste in the following code:

<!-- pick manager picure -->
<widget class="label"  alignment="right, centre_y" style="semi_bold">
<translation id="text" translation_id="292605" type="use" value="Manager Picture[COMMENT: add_manager_panel; select manager picture]" />
</widget>
<widget class="icon_button" id="slpc" alignment="left, centre_y" icon="icons/actions/select picture" fixed="true"  auto_size="vertical">
<translation id="text" translation_id="361086" type="use" value="Choose Picture[COMMENT: Minor wording change, meaing the same, us etop 10 matches; Add Manager Wizard - Button that lets the manager select a picture of himself for his ingame manager profile]" />
<event id="click_event" event_id="sepi" event_target="sepi" />
</widget>
<widget class="text"  alignment="left,centre_y" size="7" multiline="true">
<translation id="text" translation_id="292607" type="use" value="Select a picture to be used on your profile[COMMENT: add manager panel, option asking the user to select a picture for their profile]" />
</widget>

This is the code that allows you to assign a picture to your manager, and again you can change the alignment and size values to suit your preference.

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