Tactical Slider Views

[furiousuk]

Link to download the skin

Link to download the XML file

Link to download for an FM2012 version (courtesy of LlamaZA)

This post contains links to a way that you can get some custom screens into your game that highlight multiple tactical sliders on the same screen, it's incredibly useful for anyone looking to create or alter their tactic, hence the decision to post here rather than the skinning forum.

Creating the Tactical Slider Views

After reading the SFraser thread 'Meet The System' I saw that he included views where several tactical slider instructions could be seen at once. It’s an incredibly useful view if you take an holistic view of tactical instructions but one that has not been included in the release version of the game – rather annoyingly. I’ve only ever managed to replicate it in threads using a bit of photoshop magic...until now. Ah ha!

There are different ways of doing it (thanks to all those who have helped with this) but I’ve found a way that is simple to understand and, even more simply, I’ve added it to a custom skin so that if you don’t fancy the daunting & often frustrating task of digging around in XML files all you have to do is use the skin (I’ll explain how to at the end of the post). The top of this post also contains a link to the individual XML file needed to create the views – if you use a custom skin then you’ll have to place this file into a folder called ‘panels’ within the folder of the skin and it should work (it’s untested though).

I’ve created 4 views within the tactics tab:

Movement

Usage

Crossing

Defence

These views encompass all of the individual tactical instructions that you can select. The reason for the separation of Usage & Crossing is that unless you have an extremely wide screen you won’t be able to see all of the instructions. I play on 1280px width and I occasionally have to alter the width of the left-hand panel (NOT the one with the formation on it) to fit in all of the instructions but it’ll auto resize when moved so it'll stay wide enough.

This is untested on any other machine apart from my laptop at present but I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work.

Oh, I forgot to mention, for the unscrupulous or intrigued among us, go and check out these views after clicking on the tactic tab of your next opponents – it’s an added feature you’ll want to forget you have if you want to keep a clear conscience!!

FM2012

For those of you looking for these tactical slider views check the link at the top of the post. The FM2012 version is by LlamaZA so muchos gracias LlamaZA for updating these for FM12, great work!

[furiousuk]

Adding the Skin to your game

Firstly, download the .zip file and place it somewhere safe. Now you need to find where your custom skins folder is kept (mine is at C:\Users\Matt\Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2011 which I believe the default location when the game installs). This directory contains all of the custom info about your game, there should be a folder called skins in there. Now extract the FuriousSkin.zip into your skins folder and you’re almost ready to go. The extracted folder is called furious_slider.

My skins folder looks like this (I believe the file structure shown on the left is the default location)

Fire up the game and navigate to the preferences screen.

From there navigate to the display&sound tab at the top (highlighted in screenshot)

Note that I have 5 skins to select from, 3 are provided by default (FM 2011, FM 2011 Dark and Retro), 2 are custom skins (Base 2011 Dark and furiousSlider). If you haven't downloaded any additional skins then your drop-down will not include Base 2011 Dark.

Hit the skin drop-down and select furiousSlider. Make sure ‘use cache’ is unchecked and ‘always reload skin on confirm’ is checked and you should be good to go. Click confirm and the game should reload the skin.

The XML file that I’ve altered is called ‘team squad tactics view.xml’. I’ve annotated it to show what I’ve added. Just ask if you want more info about how to change the views to your liking. This file can be added to any skin you've already downloaded, just place it into the panels folder within the skin root and it should work (if you have the replace a file that already exists in that folder then it probably won't work).

[grimness]

Great! Thanks a lot.

[fman1]

I am still on FM10 and although I tried, it doesn't seem to work on FM10. Skins seem to be for the version made for only. Not backwards compatible. It looks like a fantastic idea and I have wondered how it could be done so congrats on making this available.

Is there a way of re-doing the panels to work on FM10? Would be grateful if any techy folks new how.

[furiousuk]

I tend to only buy FM every 2 years (I'm still far too engrossed in a save after just 1 year!) so I haven't got FM10. I've only changed 2 files (1 to change the attribute colours, the other to get the views I wanted) and the important one is called 'team squad tactics view.xml'. Finding that file isn't easy though. michaelmurrayuk in the skinning forum created a dark skin folder (Base 2011 Dark in the screenshots above) that is the same as the default FM11 dark skin but makes it easier for people to create custom skins. I think I located 'team squad tactics view.xml' using the Resource Archiver (this comes with the game, should be in the game folder on your hard drive). I then copied all of the Base 2011 Dark folder to a new folder, renamed it furious_slider (has to be lower-case in FM11) and renamed the settings files and then copied 'team squad tactics view.xml' into the panels folder within my new furious_slider folder.

Then it was a case of looking through the XML file for the relevant code that I could copy and paste to create the views I wanted. The key bit was that I know enough about coding (I don't know XML at all but I'm good with other programming languages so I could muddle through) to be able to identify which bits I needed to copy and the language structure to add the views.

I'd have a look in the skinning forum for a 'base' skin for FM10 and take it from there.

Actually having said all of that there is a tag called <required version> that is set to 11.1.0. I've uploaded a version of the skin that has this tag set to 10.1.0.

Download it here. I'm not sure how much the internals change between iterations of the game but it's worth a try.

[Jad123]

Thanks for these mate, they'll be very helpful. I tried to create something similar a while back but got bogged down by the code and record IDs and I gave up eventually. I appreciate the effort and I'll use them from now on in.

[fman1]

Appreciate the effort. The skin can be chosen and it loads, but the menus are missing as are the players.

Will have a bash at it myself.

Thanks

[furiousuk]

Appreciate the effort. The skin can be chosen and it loads, but the menus are missing as are the players.

Will have a bash at it myself.

Thanks

Can you post a screenshot?

[fman1]

Just removed the skin as I couldn't check players or anything. I will load it again tomorrow with your FM10 skin and post up a screenshot, at least I will try and post a screenshot as never done it before.

I have found the FM10 base skins from michealtmurrayuk and bookmarked the page to have a read in the morning. Had a couple of cheeky beers and think I will do more damage than good if I try and change anything just now.

[furiousuk]

Yeah its likely to be a compatibility issue. If things start disappearing then I think it means the game isn't reading the XML properly or that it's looking for something that isn't in there, I had a similar problem when I renamed a folder with uppercase letters - it really didn't like that and took me a little while to work out how to fix it as I couldn't get back to the relevant skin!! Maybe it'll work if you just add the 'team squad tactics view.xml' to the fm10 base skin?? These things are often more difficult after a few beers (unfortunately!)

[DeadPanda]

Saw this in the potent tactical system thread, and what a genius idea it is. Will add the XML to my custom skin and Top work!

[NotPotter]

I also looked for something like this after reading SFraser's 'Meet the System'. It is an absolute pain having to go through each slider manually in the views sections, thanks a lot for this.

[Shake Appeal]

This should be standard in the game. SI, make it happen for 2012.

[rd10]

I might be missing something... i've loaded the skin everything is ok but how do i view it like you? i cant find usage or something...

[NotPotter]

I might be missing something... i've loaded the skin everything is ok but how do i view it like you? i cant find usage or something...

Go to the tactics screen if you are not already there, ensure you the list of your players in the left hand pane. Select views (next to the filter button on the left hand pane), below that you should have the 4 new settings to choose from.

[rd10]

I did that.. still can't see them...

[furiousuk]

Are you looking for the views here:

The views drop-down has a little arrow at the bottom, if yours has a tiny arrow like that at the top (but pointing upwards) then hover over it and the list will scroll to the top (it should be there by default though). The new views are at the top.

Are you sure that the skin is loading correctly? If it is then the player attribute colours will have changed from default so that they are now dark grey, grey, yellow & green. Like this:

The final thing to check is where you've placed your skin. Your file structure should look like this:

Also make sure that the skin has been extracted correctly, your file structure for the skin should contain folders for fonts, panels & settings and your panels folder should look like the above. The crucial file is the 'team squad tactics view.xml' highlighted above, all of the others are as standard for the dark skin (apart from the colour attribute change, which is located in a settings file - I should of mentioned this, if anyone can't work out how to change the colours back to normal then let me know and I'll explain).

Are you using the skin on it's own or have you added the file as part of a custom skin?

[dz47]

furiousuk, would just like to say a very big cheers for going to all the trouble of setting this up. This has made things so much easier for me. After a bit of playing around with the different views and moving through different philosophies, roles etc I've already picked up some subtle (but important) differences between various set ups that I had entirely missed with the standard view, due to the need to look at each slider set up in isolation. I'm sure this will be a massive help to a lot of people. Cheers again.

[I<3AFC]

Great idea and Fantastic skin. Thanks a lot for this

[cragswfc]

does this work in fm12?

[furiousuk]

No idea, as I've haven't got FM12 yet but I suspect that it won't. I think SI normally tinker with file structure for each new iteration which often throws up XML problems, although this is only a minor skin alteration and doesn't have many files so it might work.

In theory just adding the 'team squad tactics view.xml' file to your existing skin should work but I have a feeling the interface has changed. If you're any good at reading XML it's fairly easy to spot what I've added and should be (hopefully) fairly easy to add to FM12, so long as you can locate the relevant file in the first place. It should be the same team squad tactics view if that helps at all.

I should also note that I managed to flamingo-up FM11 several times when fiddling with skins, the main reason is that you can delete the bits of code that tell the game how to display buttons or text which means you have no button to press to close the game, or load a game, or do anything. If this happens I think I just used task manager to close the game, found the skin I'd tried to load and DELETE it (or move it well away from the FM file structure so that FM can't find it). When you try and reload FM looks for the skin to load, can't find it and resorts to using the default skin and everything is rosy in the FM garden once more.

If you do try it please let us know if it works, either way I'll update the OP with FM12 info.

[cragswfc]

it does

but dunt because some times when you click from 1 tho the other its mess the settings up

[LoOnEY]

hi, anyone manage to do this for fm12?

i tried copying the view to my panels folder, but its not working.

[umaar]

Hi, does anyone know of a working way to do this in FM2012 ( without messing the settings up) ???

Reply greatly appreciated by West Brom Manager fighting a relegation battle with 4 games to go...I need to modify my existing tactic slightly

[LlamaZA]

I put together furious's sliders as part of my skin available here: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/292499-Tactics-Creating-your-own-tactic?p=7423144&viewfull=1#post7423144

furious, the file is now called "team squad tactics panel.xml", not sure if a simple rename will suffice, but you can always try.

[furiousuk]

I put together furious's sliders as part of my skin available here: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/292499-Tactics-Creating-your-own-tactic?p=7423144&viewfull=1#post7423144

furious, the file is now called "team squad tactics panel.xml", not sure if a simple rename will suffice, but you can always try.

Hey, great work LlamaZA on getting these in to FM12. I've updated the OP to link to you and given you a shout out on Twitter too!

[James9]

Link to download the skin

Link to download the XML file

Link to download for an FM2012 version (courtesy of LlamaZA)

This post contains links to a way that you can get some custom screens into your game that highlight multiple tactical sliders on the same screen, it's incredibly useful for anyone looking to create or alter their tactic, hence the decision to post here rather than the skinning forum.

Creating the Tactical Slider Views

After reading the SFraser thread 'Meet The System' I saw that he included views where several tactical slider instructions could be seen at once. It’s an incredibly useful view if you take an holistic view of tactical instructions but one that has not been included in the release version of the game – rather annoyingly. I’ve only ever managed to replicate it in threads using a bit of photoshop magic...until now. Ah ha!

There are different ways of doing it (thanks to all those who have helped with this) but I’ve found a way that is simple to understand and, even more simply, I’ve added it to a custom skin so that if you don’t fancy the daunting & often frustrating task of digging around in XML files all you have to do is use the skin (I’ll explain how to at the end of the post). The top of this post also contains a link to the individual XML file needed to create the views – if you use a custom skin then you’ll have to place this file into a folder called ‘panels’ within the folder of the skin and it should work (it’s untested though).

I’ve created 4 views within the tactics tab:

Movement

Usage

Crossing

Defence

These views encompass all of the individual tactical instructions that you can select. The reason for the separation of Usage & Crossing is that unless you have an extremely wide screen you won’t be able to see all of the instructions. I play on 1280px width and I occasionally have to alter the width of the left-hand panel (NOT the one with the formation on it) to fit in all of the instructions but it’ll auto resize when moved so it'll stay wide enough.

This is untested on any other machine apart from my laptop at present but I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work.

Oh, I forgot to mention, for the unscrupulous or intrigued among us, go and check out these views after clicking on the tactic tab of your next opponents – it’s an added feature you’ll want to forget you have if you want to keep a clear conscience!!

FM2012

For those of you looking for these tactical slider views check the link at the top of the post. The FM2012 version is by LlamaZA so muchos gracias LlamaZA for updating these for FM12, great work!

Furiousuk can I ask you what roles and duties you give to your players in your 433/451 set up. I have been trying to get the right roles for the 451/433 formation for a while but can never get the right set up. Also would you recommend a balance or fluid philosophy for 433/451 formation. Sorry about asking these question on this thread but I am fan of your tactical expertise so any help you can give me would be great.

[furiousuk]

Furiousuk can I ask you what roles and duties you give to your players in your 433/451 set up. I have been trying to get the right roles for the 451/433 formation for a while but can never get the right set up. Also would you recommend a balance or fluid philosophy for 433/451 formation. Sorry about asking these question on this thread but I am fan of your tactical expertise so any help you can give me would be great.

Here you go, bud, have a look here. I've got four basic 433/451 formations that I use (I tinker quite a lot based on the situation in the game but this is what I always start with). The thread has all the info you need in it (I think) and explains why I think the tactical framework is strong and, more importantly, why I think it is strong with my squad. As it goes, I've improved my squad massively since then (hadn't won much back then, won everything now ) but still use the same basic setups, it's just that I've changed how frequently I use each one (I've also got a 4231 I use a lot and I've tinkered with a funny 442 and a 4312 as well).