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core xbox steam shell
8 files
.gitignore
main.js
package-lock.json
package.json
preload.js
README.md
stage.mjs
steam_appid.txt
README.md

oskiewar's Steam shell #

An Electron window around the browser runtime — the same xbox/live/oskiewar.js that oskiewar.com serves and the reel factory renders three times a day. The rationale for choosing Electron over extending the native shells is in ../STEAM.md under Build strategy; the short version is that this is the one runtime with production mileage, headless test coverage, and a content-hash burner watching it.

npm start                                   # needs electron on PATH
../../../node_modules/electron/dist/Electron.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron .   # or the repo's copy

How it fits together #

oskiewar.js has no I/O of its own — no fetch, no DOM, no audio, no storage. It is pure logic reading nineteen host functions that mac-test.html passes in positionally through new Function. So the shell supplies a host, not a port.

  • main.js registers an app:// scheme and serves xbox/live off disk, with the same six out-of-tree assets xbox/tools/serve-live.mjs maps (QR encoder, analytics, two cursors, Comic Relief). Keep the two maps in step.
  • preload.js reads the game source and exposes it as __fightPieceSource, the branch mac-test.html checks before it fetches /oskiewar.js. Taking it also skips the two-second update poller behind it, which is a live-reload affordance a shipped build has no use for.
  • The window is pinned to 16:9 via setAspectRatio. The game fixes vertical to 1080 logical units and derives width from the box aspect, so a 16:9 window is 1920×1080 to the game. There is no set-resolution host call — this is the whole mechanism, and it is also how the store screenshots get their required dimensions.
  • blur/focus drive the frame driver's setVisible, because a backgrounded desktop window never fires visibilitychange and would otherwise free-run.

Verified 2026-09-15 #

npm run build:mac packages a signed (Developer ID, not notarized) arm64 app that boots to the real title screen in ~0.8 s with [boot] on stdout, steamworks.js loaded and SteamAPI_Init reached (it fails only because no Steam client is running, which is the expected answer on a dev box). build:linux and build:win produce dir outputs from macOS too. OSKIEWAR_SHELL_SHOT=/path.png makes a packaged build write what its window shows after eight seconds and quit — the smoke test, with no screen recorder.

The staged page is trimmed at stage time (see trim() in stage.mjs; every cut is an exact-match edit that throws when the live page moves): no Open Graph meta, no Auth0 preload, the account corner hidden, the FPS governor pinned at full resolution, qrcode undefined so the four QR sites collapse, the ?midi lane off, and not versus-capable — the web front door opens a relay room and prints fight a friend oskiewar.com/<room>, which a Steam player cannot use, so the Steam build keeps the local front the native shell gets. The page's console errors and its [boot] line are mirrored to stdout.

Two staging lessons that cost a blank window: account.mjs imports auth0-otp.mjs statically (unstaged, the whole module graph fails), and the page prefers the woff2 face since v118. Both are in the maps now, which the header comment counts as eight.

Still owed #

  • Overlay check on all three OSes — electronEnableSteamOverlay() runs, but nobody has seen the overlay draw; macOS is historically the flaky one.
  • A Windows and Linux boot on real machines (they are cross-built here and never launched).
  • A pad-only pass boot → rematch before ticking Full Controller Support.
  • The appid. steam_appid.txt holds 480 (Spacewar) until Steamworks assigns one; then node ../depots/depots.mjs --appid=<n> writes the depot VDFs and ../depots/upload.sh pushes all three builds with steamcmd.