herbert
Club Supporter
OK, @Dottegeo I have done some home work over the night. The results may not be as hoped, but I think it sheds some light on how stuff works internally. Here's what I did for the technically interested. Others may want to ignore it because it may be kind of hard to follow.
What I did, roughly, was a brute-force experiment. From the original FIP400 database, using DBMaster, I extracted the commentarynames table into a file. Then I wrote a C program allowing me to read it, detect which IDs from a given range were missing, add them with unique auto-generated names and then create a new file that can then be imported into DBMaster again. Hence I replaced the original commentarynames table by an "extended version" containing lots of more IDs now.
In order to not overload the game I created two files:
If I haven't found anything, why am I so sure? Of course I ran a positive test
For this, I created a file commentary-900001-940000-reference-924154.txt in which I specifically included ID 924154 (Levan Kenia) of which I knew that it was in the original DB. After importing it I deleted the entry for "Levan Kenia" from the table in DBMaster before saving. Now, when running the game, in the Create Player screen, I would find my auto generated name, and when previewing, I'd hear the "Levan Kenia" audio.
So no mistakes here, and, sorry, but it looks like in the ID range from 900000 to 980000 there is no hidden commentary name for Martin Tyler. And since 980000 is already well beyond the highest exsisting ID value present in the DB I don't expect that increasing that value will yield any other result.
On the way I also found out what should really be obvious (stupid me), but just in case for who is interested: the column commentarystartingletter in the table contains numbers from 1-26 controlling under which starting letter the commentary name will be shown in the Create Player screen. Hence I always generate my new lines with "1", so that everything would pop up under "A" (only with Martin Tyler there isn't anything to show as written above).
For those interested and using different commentators there actually may be hidden commentary names, as some here have already pointed out. So there's a good point in repeating my experiment on systems with different audio installed. Hence I have zipped what I have done and put the archive for download on my google drive: commentarynames.zip
This file contains several folders:
If there are indeed hidden commentary names in other languages / with other commentators, then the above should help you to find them without endlessly having to edit and start over the game. Setting up a shared document with what you found may be of interest to the community.
Ultimately I am putting my hopes on somebody decoding the audio file format (and how it is organised) in both, FIFA 14 and subsequent versions of the game, so that audio added in later versions and not yet present in FIFA 14 could be imported into FIFA 14.
@Harry BullZak mentioned that some folks are working on this (though there doesn't seem to be any breakthrough in sight), and I really think that this is the way to go - it would help us getting far more new commentary names than by uncovering some hidden ones already in the game.
What I did, roughly, was a brute-force experiment. From the original FIP400 database, using DBMaster, I extracted the commentarynames table into a file. Then I wrote a C program allowing me to read it, detect which IDs from a given range were missing, add them with unique auto-generated names and then create a new file that can then be imported into DBMaster again. Hence I replaced the original commentarynames table by an "extended version" containing lots of more IDs now.
In order to not overload the game I created two files:
- commentary-900001-940000.txt
- commentary-940001-980000.txt
- Click the button with the green arrow for importing a single table into DBMaster
- Select the respective file above
- Save the DB
- Run the game to see whether there's any new comment names showing up in the Create Player screen
If I haven't found anything, why am I so sure? Of course I ran a positive test

For this, I created a file commentary-900001-940000-reference-924154.txt in which I specifically included ID 924154 (Levan Kenia) of which I knew that it was in the original DB. After importing it I deleted the entry for "Levan Kenia" from the table in DBMaster before saving. Now, when running the game, in the Create Player screen, I would find my auto generated name, and when previewing, I'd hear the "Levan Kenia" audio.
So no mistakes here, and, sorry, but it looks like in the ID range from 900000 to 980000 there is no hidden commentary name for Martin Tyler. And since 980000 is already well beyond the highest exsisting ID value present in the DB I don't expect that increasing that value will yield any other result.
On the way I also found out what should really be obvious (stupid me), but just in case for who is interested: the column commentarystartingletter in the table contains numbers from 1-26 controlling under which starting letter the commentary name will be shown in the Create Player screen. Hence I always generate my new lines with "1", so that everything would pop up under "A" (only with Martin Tyler there isn't anything to show as written above).
For those interested and using different commentators there actually may be hidden commentary names, as some here have already pointed out. So there's a good point in repeating my experiment on systems with different audio installed. Hence I have zipped what I have done and put the archive for download on my google drive: commentarynames.zip
This file contains several folders:
- 900001-940000-reference-924154 my reference data set (file to import and also the DB with it imported) with a duplicate Levan Kenia (if using the file to import, the original, with name "Levan Kenia", needs to be deleted in DBMaster before saving), to see that it works.
- 900001-940000 the first ID range (file to import and also the DB with it imported)
- 940001-980000 the second ID range (file to import and also the DB with it imported)
- orig-fip400 the original DB from which I started (the above import files will not work with any other D
- src my source code (don't expect any support on this, but some may be interested)
If there are indeed hidden commentary names in other languages / with other commentators, then the above should help you to find them without endlessly having to edit and start over the game. Setting up a shared document with what you found may be of interest to the community.
Ultimately I am putting my hopes on somebody decoding the audio file format (and how it is organised) in both, FIFA 14 and subsequent versions of the game, so that audio added in later versions and not yet present in FIFA 14 could be imported into FIFA 14.
@Harry BullZak mentioned that some folks are working on this (though there doesn't seem to be any breakthrough in sight), and I really think that this is the way to go - it would help us getting far more new commentary names than by uncovering some hidden ones already in the game.
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