Championship Manager 01/02 basically came stripped from decent backgrounds, only containing a couple of "pro football related" pictures, but most of them were pictures of a team wearing the new Championship Manager merchandise. SI's fault? Nope, just the clubs asking money for every single little logo or player's face when it is being used commercially.

So is there a solution to this all? Yes, there is. You can add your own backgrounds and it isn't even that difficult to do. We tell you how.

What to do first?
Make sure you have the right size in pixels, as anything smaller or bigger than 800 pixels wide and 600 pixels in height won't work properly. You can verify this by using a graphics program and look for the right width and height on the image. If needed you could decrease the size to 800x600. Increasing it, doesn't work to well most of the time and the picture will start to look strange.

When you have set the right size it is time for saving the file. Most graphic files come in the JPG format, but that is not the format required to get your background into Championship Manager. In the toolbar, select SAVE AS and instead of saving it as a JPG, save it as a BMP file. The little pop-up window gives you the opportunity to select the format you want. There is a little pulldown menu at the bottom of the pop-up window.

Note: remember the full path where you have saved the bitmap!! for example that could be c:\mypictures\picture1.bmp. c:\mypictures is extremely important to remember in this case. Be aware that this could be different with you.

Using the CM Picture Editor
Now that you have saved your background as a BMP file with the size 800 in width and 600 in height, it is time to get the CM Picture Editor up and running and to convert the file into a Championship Manager background.

You can start your CM Picture Editor by using this path on the taskbar: START > Programs > Championship Manager 01-02 > CM Picture Editor (and click the last one. Once it has started you click on LOAD and select Background bitmap. From that point on you will have to fill in the path (directory) where you have saved the bitmap file to. Click somewhere right to the word "Directory" and fill in the path there. Press 'enter' and when you have filled in the path correctly the BMP's in that directory should appear. Select the bitmap you desire (but think of the width and height) and press OK in the bottom right corner. The background should appear in the editor now (background).

The next thing to do is to save the background. By clicking on SAVE in the left menu you will be given the option of saving it as a menubar, background and history. Select background and give it an appropriate name, so you can easily track it back. The background will be saved as an RGN file automatically!

Adding team specific backgrounds
Head for the you Championship Manager picture directory and look for a file called pics.cfg. Open that file with a text editor, for example notepad. Underneath [Clubs] look for the club you wish to add this picture to and if it does exist add the club's name, but use the FULL NAME of the club. Use the following format: Full name of club: picturename.rgn

When you have made the changes you simply save the file and the background changes you have made should appear the next time you boot your game.

Mark Geneste and El Botti (The Dugout Forums)