Although Bang Average Football includes a variety of player hairstyles and facial hair, it is still possible to use custom appearance styles in-game; both for your Story mode player, and for players in custom databases.

Where are my custom appearance styles?

The local folder where the game will load custom hairstyles and facial hair from depends on your OS*.

Every valid appearance style consists of two images: match.png and story.png. Each file is required for different contexts:

• match.png is used to apply custom styles to players while playing matches.
• story.png is used for Story mode to apply custom styles to players in the overworld, as well as for portraits in tactics and team management screens.

For example, let's look at the below directory structure:

BangAverageFootball/
    custom/
        hairstyles/
            MyValidHairstyle/
                match.png
                story.png
            MyInvalidHairstyle1/
                match.png
            MyInvalidHairstyle2/
                match-sheet.png
                story-sheet.png

There is only one valid custom hairstyle here: MyValidHairstyle. It's the only database correctly formatted as a match.png and a story.png file within a subfolder of the custom hairstyles folder. The others are not valid (missing or incorrectly named files) and will be ignored by the game.

You can have a look at an example of a valid custom hairstyle and facial hair style in the _help/ folder in both the custom hairstyles folder and the custom facial hair folder. Copying the entire ExampleHairstyle or ExampleFacialHair folders into their respective custom style folders will make them visible as usable custom styles in-game.

Uploading to Steam Workshop

Custom appearance styles can be shared with others by uploading them to the Steam Workshop, as long as they:

• Are valid, with correctly sized match.png and story.png files.
• Include a preview.png file at least 512px x 512px. This can be automatically generated in-game!

Custom appearance styles can be uploaded to Steam Workshop directly from the custom appearance management screen; no additional software is needed:

1. From the main menu, go to More... → Custom Content → Manage Appearances.

2. Select the custom appearance style you wish to upload and generate a preview image if necessary. Otherwise, select Upload to Steam Workshop.

3. Enter a useful, user-discoverable title for your new Steam Workshop item and select Upload to Steam Workshop.

4. That's it! View your new Steam Workshop page and make sure to fill out a description before making it visible!

Using Templates & Palettes

You can find templates and palettes for creating custom hairstyles and facial hair in the _help/ folder in both the custom hairstyles and custom facial hair directories. Both .png and .aseprite file formats are available. You can also find .png templates and palettes below:

match_template.png

story_template.png

match_palette.png

story_palette.png

Using Templates

Each template shows the required animation states and directions for a custom style. Styles for Story sprites are somewhat simple with fewer designs required, but each design requires a high level of detail. Designing styles for match sprites is more complex as they use more directions (8 in total) and more animation states to account for the different actions players can take during play, but each design does not require a high level of detail due to the motion and small size of the player sprites.

Note that the template itself shouldn't be included when saving or exporting custom styles. Examples of a correctly exported custom hairstyle are visible below; each image correctly uses the palettes for both matches and Story contexts, which means these hairstyles will correctly re-colour for each player's skin tone and hair colour:

match.png

story.png

Bear in mind that hairstyles and facial hair will always be drawn over a player's body; it is not possible to draw anything underneath their body. It is also not possible to use transparency or other effects; the game will only be able to correctly re-colour sprites if the colours from the provided palettes are used at full opacity.