Launch Games with a voice assistant, because why not

[suicidal_banana]

Heya,

Just a fun little guide for something i've been trying to do for a while, tell my computer to start GTA, maybe even before im in the house. Ended up posting it here because we dont have a general guides section and idk, GTA5 seemed most relevant time-period wise (gta online maybe even more so but idk, this seemed like a better spot to post it) Anyway i initially tried to use Cortana for this a few months ago but that system doesnt understand the term GTA (or the name of pretty much any game) most of the time, and when it does it ignores the shortcut its supposed to launch & runs a bing search like 8 out of 10 times... useless. If anybody has a way to get it working well with Cortana please share (tried several different tricks to get it to work, all to no avail) 

Instead we will be using google assistant and some free software, the initial setup is a little more work but it also has more nerd-street-cred, because using this approach you dont even need to be at your computer to bark at it, with the below you can control your PC if you shout at your phone, google home speaker, etc. All websites and software listed below is free or has free versions, i am in no way connected to any of these companies, if you sprain your wrist im not accountable, blabla usual disclaimer stuff etc.

Ok so heres what you will need, use the below links to download the software (dont start the installers yet) and create 2 accounts:

- Any device with Google Assistant (a phone, a tablet, a google home, etc. Should be same account you link if you do that)
- Push2Run software (free)

- Get yourself a free Pushbullet account & their Windows App 

- Get yourself a free IFTTT account

(link your google account is by far the easiest & best option for both)

 

 

Here's what you do after getting the above prepared, the bulk of installing and configuring:

Spoiler

- Log in on PushBullet website, go to Settings, under the header 'Access Tokens' look for a button 'Create Access Token', click that and copy your access token
- Run the Push2Run installer, when it opens the 'Options' window for you to configure Pushbullet or Pushover click on the 'Pushbullet' section in the list on the left side of the options window, paste the access token you just copied into the 'Pushbullet API' field, then copy the value you see in the 'Title filter' field below to your clipboard & then just finish the setup process.
- Log in on IFTTT, click your profile avatar (grey circle with person icon) at the top-right and click 'Create' in the menu that pops out, click on the first + symbol (between If & This)

- In the screens that follow, first select 'Google Assistant', then click on 'Say a phrase with a text ingredient', in the form you get after that you can configure what to say/what response to get, for now just put in the value's shown here, you can always go back later to edit them. Once you've completed the form click 'Create trigger'
- After the above you automatically go back to an earlier screen, the one with the IF THIS THEN THAT line, only now the + symbol has moved forward, click the + symbol again, in the screens that follow first select the 'Pushbullet' service & then choose 'Push a note', finally you should land on a short green form similar to the one shown here, paste the Title you copied from Push2Run 'Title filter' into the 'Title' field of this form, do not edit the 'Message' field, that should hold a white box with a black 'TextField' label, leave that there. Click the 'Create Action' button.
- Next you install the Pushbullet Windows App, make sure both Pushbullet and Push2Run are running (both leave an icon in your system tray, them little icons next to the clock) and test the whole setup, assuming you went with the suggested trigger words you should try saying this into a Google Assistant device of your liking: "Hey Google, tell my computer to search for pictures of Lester Crest", this should pop your default browser open on some google image results for lester crest, good times!

 

Now that we have the software running and the accounts linked together we can finally go configure what we set out to do, launch games with voice commands! heres how:
- Lets start with a steam game, and use GTA5 as an example:

Spoiler

- First you go into your library, pick a game like GTA5, rightclick it & then click 'properties'
- In the menu that opens click 'CREATE DESKTOP SHORTCUT', close the menu, rightclick the new desktop shortcut, open properties.
- Inside Push2Run in the menu go to 'Actions -> Add', in the description field put something like 'Launch GTA5' and in the listen for field put this text:

Quote

run gta
start gta

- Now copy the value of the 'URL' field of the GTA5 shortcut properties into the 'Open' field of the Push2Run Add/Change window, close shortcut properties, remove shortcut.

- Click 'OK' in the Push2Run window, it will tell you it doesn't know what program to use to open with and ask if you want to save anyway, ignore the warning & just click 'Yes'
- In the main Push2Run window you should now see a option called 'Launch GTA5' (or whatever you called it) click the button infront of it so it becomes green/enabled. Done! try your new voice command!

- Lets also cover a non steam game, using GTA:SA as an example:

Spoiler

- Inside Push2Run in the menu go to 'Actions -> Add', in the description field put something like 'Launch GTA:SA' and in the listen for field put this text:

Quote

run san andreas
start san andreas

- In your windows file explorer browse too the directory you've installed GTA:SA at (or any other game that you want to launch the exe from)
- Click in the white part of the file-path shown near the top of the window (starts with 'This PC > ...') and copy the text path you get, paste this in the 'Open' & 'Start directory' fields of the Push2Run window
- Edit the 'Open' field to include a backslash and point to the exe file in question, in my case this is "S:\GTA-SA-MP\gta_sa.exe", click the 'OK' button, enable the card in the main Push2Run window, done!

 

 

Other notes and stuff:

- If you run into any issue's check this guide, its what the above was based on, if that doesnt help post below and i'll try my best to help.

- You might want to reconsider the 'hot words' you use on IFTTT because having to say 'tell my computer to ...' every time gets old fast, i changed mine to 'computer $' and 'desktop $', its a lot less natural but also less prone to making mistakes or the text-to-speech failing to understand you.
- You can pretty much do anything trough this setup now, control music, do commandline stuff, etc, see these examples and this forum for details, obviously its important to remember that user detection by voice isnt perfect and you should be careful about adding some of the functionalities posted on that forum. (read: if you wanna get technical this can become a security breach if you add a bunch of specific voice commands, thats also why theres so many toggle switches, you may want to only enable some of those voice cmd's when you're actually near your computer, just something to keep in mind)

Hope this helps somebody, again if anybody has any questions just check the provided guide or ask below  

Edited December 29, 2019 by suicidal_banana
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