Want to play Phasmophobia on a Linux desktop or Steam Deck? Well, it still doesn't yet work fully as the voice recognition isn't there but support for it is coming thanks to the Wine team.
On Steam you would use Proton (which is built from Wine) since it's a Windows game, but the problem is that Phasmophobia uses Windows-specific voice recognition which you can't replicate right now. Recently though, Wine development version 7.4 was released and the changelog noted some additions for speech recognition.
To give more info, World Wine News issue 414 went up titled "The Curious Case of Phasmophobia" and as it turns out, the work involved is to directly help this game (and as a bonus of course bring speech recognition to Wine / Proton) as it's a good popular game to test with.
With the work spearheaded by developer Bernhard Kölbl (with help from others), they've created the start of an implementation of the windows.media.speech libraries. To even get there though, many other parts of Wine needed improving or some things missing entirely like adding in new "boilerplate code" for the likes of the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and Windows Runtime (WinRT). After that, they needed some speech recognition software, as it would be crazy to write their own, so they ended up with Vosk and got it working with Wine.
This is only the beginning they say so more patches and work is yet to come. Still, it might not be too long before the ghosts will hear your screams.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
i quoted direct from WineHQ, if is saw that you posted this before i would put this news instead.
I really curious about how they intend to solve this one, since voice recognition is part of windows itself rather than a package that comes with the game. They might have to thrown those calls in another voice recognition API because they can't just use Cortana outside windows for legal reasons, and as far as I know, they also can't just translate the calls through wine because the game itself is just using a windows component instead of distributing it.
Long time ago, I've asked on their proton issue on Github if would be possible to redirect the calls to an open API like MycroftAI, but no answers on that either.
In my opinion the easiest way would be helping the original game developers to support a more independent voice API recognition (or rather Valve develop that API as part of "steam works" package), because I can't imagine the immense amount of work it would take wine developers to re implement Microsoft voice recognition, and I think there aren't universal standards on those kind of software yet.
Quoting: BielFPsI really curious about how they intend to solve this one, since voice recognition is part of windows itself rather than a package that comes with the game. They might have to thrown those calls in another voice recognition API because they can't just use Cortana outside windows for legal reasons, and as far as I know, they also can't just translate the calls through wine because the game itself is just using a windows component instead of distributing it.It's noted right in the article, and in their post. They will use Vosk. Doesn't really matter if something is part of Windows, if Wine has its API updated to forward the calls once it has an implementation done - like everything it does.
Quoting: Liam DaweIt's noted right in the article, and in their post. They will use Vosk.Missed that part of Vosk, problems of reading while doing other things at same time
Quoting: Liam DaweDoesn't really matter if something is part of Windows, if Wine has its API updated to forward the calls once it has an implementation done - like everything it does.Yep, I've stated that in case of an attempt to use Cortana itself like some cases with media foundation codecs for example (where users include the missing libraries, not wine). Fortunately since they choose the sane option of directing the api calls to an already open source alternative (rather than develop an wine version of it), now it's a matter of how well it will performs in practice and how much time it'll be ready since it's still a lot of work to do something like this.
Also Proton might gain a few extra megabytes if Valve opt to include whatever Vosk lib they need as a dependency (judging by a scenario where more games could depend on it besides Phasmophobia).
Last edited by BielFPs on 21 March 2022 at 5:15 pm UTC
Quoting: Guestit's high-time Valve start advocating for native games.
Valve tried that already in the era of Steam Machines. The industry didn't listen, so Valve pivoted to Proton.
TheRiddick Mar 22, 2022
Would be neat if that was possible. Kind of silly for games to rely on MS Speech-to-Text or Cortana to do the work.
Last edited by TheRiddick on 22 March 2022 at 9:21 pm UTC
Very fun game but i understand if the dev who works alone takes his time and prefers to release more maps and ghosts than adding a solution for linux right now
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