Graphics & Skins in FM2011 FAQ

There has been a slight change to the way you reload the Skin Cache in FM2011.

If you go into the Preference -> Display & Sound Screen you need to untick 'Use Skin Cache' and tick 'Always Reload Skin on Confirm' as before, however you'll now notice that a 'Reload Skin' button appears in the bottom left corner.

The Reload Skin button is there because if you now go into the Preferences Screen the Confirm button is grayed out unless you make a change, so if you go into the Preferences menu just to reload the skin you will need to select the Reload Skin button instead of the Confirm button.

The Following FM2010 Graphics work fine with FM2011:

- Logos (All of them)
- Player Faces.
- 2D Kits.

The Following FM2010 Graphics will not work with FM2011:

- Skins
- 3D Kits.

Any other graphics may or may not work, I have only tested the ones mentioned above. To use compatible graphics from FM2010 in FM2011, please follow the steps within the installation guide from HERE

Please note if your logos aren't working then you just need to change the file extensions from .PNG to .png

There isn't a resource archive tool included with the FM2011 demo. However the old tool that came with FM2010 works just fine. It occasionally looks like it's locked up but it will eventually complete the extraction of any fmf file from the FM11 demo.

Background pictures are working out-of-the-box this year on FM2011 with the default skin. There are however a couple of issues with their use.

1. There is no sort of overlay meaning that text is virtually unreadable on many screens when backgrounds are enabled.
2. The background code is not implemented correctly. If you navigate from a page with a background to one without one the background from the previous screen sticks.

These are both solvable through a couple of simple changes via skinning but will require the use of a slightly altered skin.

There are two skins you can download if you want Background Pictures to work:
Radestock's Default Skin - Use this if you only want to use Background Pictures.
Base 2011 BG Skin - Base Skin that includes Radestock's above mod whilst making it easier to edit the colours and also includes some comonly edited files.

As some of you may have noticed there is no Dark Skin included in the demo, nor will their be one included in the box. However Miles has just announced in his blog at the Mirror that the Dark Skin will be included in the Release Day Patch. (A Base Version will also follow after I have got my hands on the patch).

The problem seems to be with the file extension of the logos, for some reason FM2011 isn't reading any files with the extension .PNG, to fix this all you need to do is locate the logos that don't show and change the extension from .PNG to .png

To change the file extension in Windows you will need to:

- Go to Folder and Search Options item in the folder menu (the location of this will change depending on what version of Windows you are using, it should also be accessable through the Control Panel).
- Click on the View Tab.
- In the Advanced Settings Tab, untick 'Hide extensions for known file types'
- Click OK.
- Now with the extensions visible change any extension that appears as .PNG to .png
- Load the game and your images should now display.

Thanks to winther for getting to the bottom of this problem.

On FM2011 it is now possible to choose whether to display logos or kits on the match overview screen, to get logos to display follow the instructions here.

If you are using FM2010 applying the patch to your game will re-enable the display of the 2D kits on the Match Overview screen. Once you have patched your FM2010 game it is not possible to have the logos re-show on the Match Overview Screen (though they will now show in the header).

If you are still using FM2009 sadly it is impossible at the moment for kits to be shown on the match overview screen. The 3D versions caused crashing problems when shown in the match screen so SI replaced them with team badges instead. 2D versions would still work but with the changes SI made they cannot be re-enabled.