This is the no-WebView Aesthetic Computer host. It is a C++/CX UWP DirectX application with native Direct3D 11 rendering, XAudio2 sound, Windows.Gaming.Input polling, and a QuickJS-ng interpreter compiled into the package.

The fallback package boots a bundled JavaScript smoke piece. Device Portal debug output includes AC_NATIVE_BIOS_READY engine=quickjs-ng piece=smoke.

Package tiles and splash art are generated from the current Pals image served by https://pals.aesthetic.computer, pinned in xbox/assets/pals.png.

The JS environment exposes an allowlisted piece API plus the lifecycle functions boot, sim, paint, act, and leave. It has no DOM, WebView, filesystem, process, Device Portal, arbitrary WinRT, or arbitrary network globals.

Current bindings are wipe, queued box, line, bitmap write, native systemWrite, Segoe MDL2 systemGlyph, latest AC painting, one-shot synth, MenuBand-derived drum, continuous oscillator / oscillatorStop, controllers, indexed gamepad(0) / gamepad(1) snapshots (plain gamepad() remains Player 1), capabilities, runtime, the host-mediated ac feed, and bounded structured telemetry. Revision 29 adds bounded gameSignal(event, player, value, value2) OSC output to UDP 51338; the host fixes the LAN broadcast destination and pieces never receive a general socket. Revision 25 adds the host-mediated disc, discScan, discShow, discPhoto, and discCopy photo-disc surface. The ac snapshot polls only declared Aesthetic Computer mood, clock-chat, and painting endpoints; sandboxed pieces do not receive a general HTTP primitive. Runtime failures roll back to the last known good piece.

Revision 53 adds a persistent 2048×2048 RGBA decal surface. decalClear() starts a new surface and reports availability; decalStamp(sx, sy, sw, sh, x1, y1, x2, y2, x3, y3, x4, y4) composites one atlas stamp into texture pixels. decalMesh(handle, camera, left, near, width, depth) projects that texture onto an existing retained mesh using world X/Z coordinates. Stamps are composited once, dirty pixels upload only when changed, and frame cost depends on the fixed mesh rather than elapsed riding time. The CPU canvas and GPU texture each use 16 MiB. Marks survive rider resets; changing maps or reloading the piece starts a new surface.

Revision 54 carries reciprocal view depth with decal UVs through clipping and rasterization, so perspective camera movement keeps the texture attached to the pool instead of warping it across screen-space triangles.

The photo-disc service recursively searches mounted removable volumes for .jpg, .jpeg, .jpe, .png, .tif, .tiff, and .pcd. It keeps WinRT StorageFile objects and paths inside the native host, bounds discovery to 4,096 photos, bounds encoded input to 128 MiB, decodes through Windows Imaging to an sRGB image no larger than 2,048 pixels per side, and publishes only an immutable status snapshot to JavaScript. discPhoto draws the current decoded image through the existing scene texture path. discCopy makes a flat, numbered copy of the discovered photos under LocalState/photo-cd, where Xbox Device Portal can retrieve them. .pcd is inventoried because Kodak Photo CDs commonly use it; display still depends on the Xbox Windows image decoder having a codec for that particular file.

Revision 22 turns the existing Windows.Devices.Midi probe into a hot-plug monophonic instrument. Note On/Off gates a native XAudio2 sine oscillator, 14-bit pitch bend shifts it continuously, CC1 is exposed for modulation, and CC7 controls level. runtime() reports the gate, channel, note, velocity, pitch bend, last controller/value, port status, and input-to-audio latency.

Revision 23 adds a bounded UDP MIDI inlet on port 51337. It accepts only the ACM1 bridge envelope and only Note On/Off, CC, and pitch-bend messages, then feeds the exact same native oscillator/event path as a local MIDI port. This is needed for instruments such as Yamaha reface whose vendor USB-MIDI driver is not available inside Xbox UWP. On a Mac connected to the same private network:

swift xbox/tools/midi-bridge.swift <xbox-host> reface

The bridge reads CoreMIDI, prints the live event stream, and sends one compact UDP datagram per musical event. The Xbox HUD changes from NETWORK-LISTENING :51337 to NETWORK: REFACE YC after the first packet.

Revision 30 caps the DXGI device frame queue at one and records controller-edge to-present latency as AC_NATIVE_INPUT_LATENCY. oskiewar emits OSC addresses under /oskiewar/* on UDP 51338; ac-m4l/AC-GameSignals.amxd.json turns bounded combat and movement-edge events into MIDI notes. The sender starts a datagram when gameSignal is called, drains its three consecutive reliability copies as each asynchronous write completes, and reports enqueue-to-StoreAsync completion as AC_NATIVE_OSKIEWAR_SIGNAL_LATENCY. This measures the native send queue, not UDP delivery or Ableton's audio output latency. The Max receiver uses the sequence field to collapse each consecutive three-copy group and caps its own queue at 256 datagrams so overload drops signals instead of playing a long stale backlog.

Revision 31 adds the allowlisted oskiewar fighter profile feed for @jeffrey, @fifi, @oskie, and @sat: current mood, per-character handle colors, and latest public system-chat text. The sandbox still receives only the immutable ac() snapshot and has no general network access. It also packages the existing YWFT Processing face and exposes it through bounded ywftWrite; write remains the native AC block face and systemWrite remains the Xbox system face.

oskiewar also packages the KidLisp Comic Relief face and exposes it through bounded comicWrite; its browser, macOS, replay, spectator, and Xbox clients therefore render the same UI typography without relying on an installed font.

Revision 32 removes the global chromatic channel offset. The point-sampled scan, one-pixel dither, and vignette remain without separating RGB edges.

Revision 33 exposes bounded saveReplay for versioned .oskiedemo match streams. The host accepts one JSON object up to 512 KiB and uploads it to the fixed AC replay endpoint; pieces receive neither arbitrary networking nor storage credentials.

Revision 34 starts each oskiewar OSC datagram immediately, preserves the three-copy reliability group without a queue race, and reports native enqueue-to-send latency for live Ableton diagnosis.

Revision 35 presents the installed Xbox app as oskiewar while retaining the stable AestheticComputer.NativeBios identity for in-place upgrades. It adds the oskiewar / NEW GAME boot selector, a two-pad input lab, and live match spectator publishing.

Revision 36 accepts the current short speakable round IDs in the QuickJS publishLive boundary. Older hosts can no longer stop play when spectator publishing encounters a newer ID: the piece disables only that transport.

Revision 37 removes the native controller-probe tone and full-frame input flash from normal play. Piece-authored action sounds remain, with native bell and whoosh voices for the round countdown and knockout camera.

Revision 13 also exposes bounded stampPainting and blur primitives to the trusted host-side KidLisp compiler. See ../KIDLISP-NATIVE.md for the supported subset and $obk wire-deploy flow.

Live development from blueberry #

xbox/tools/live.mjs is the credential-safe control surface for agents and humans. It reads Device Portal credentials from the Xbox vault on blueberry; credentials never enter the repository or command output.

node xbox/tools/live.mjs status
node xbox/tools/live.mjs install xbox/builds/1.0.0.10/NativeBios_1.0.0.10_x64.msix xbox/builds/1.0.0.10/Microsoft.VCLibs.x64.14.00.appx
node xbox/tools/live.mjs deploy xbox/live/controller-probe.js
node xbox/tools/live.mjs deploy xbox/live/native-showcase.js
node xbox/tools/live.mjs deploy xbox/live/photo-disc.js
node xbox/tools/live.mjs deploy-kidlisp '$obk'
node xbox/tools/live.mjs logs 100
node xbox/tools/live.mjs screenshot tmp/xbox-captures/frame.png
node xbox/tools/live.mjs video 10 tmp/xbox-captures/clip.mp4
node xbox/tools/live.mjs frames tmp/xbox-captures/frame-trace.json

The deploy command publishes sandboxed JavaScript into the installed package's LocalState/live-piece.js, launches the newest installed BIOS revision, and prints recent telemetry.

video records a timestamped Device Portal MP4 and JSON sidecar. Portal capture is intentionally low-rate; frames exports and analyzes the latest round's 60 Hz camera/player trace, including per-field ranges, frame steps, direction reversals, and the largest motion spikes.

After a successful Native BIOS install, the tool removes stale uninstallable AC development packages from earlier experiments. Cleanup is restricted to our CN=AestheticComputerDev publisher or AestheticComputer.* package namespace, and always preserves AestheticComputer.NativeBios; system and unrelated dev packages are never targeted. prune is also available as an explicit command.

Build #

Live post shaders (development BIOS 52+) #

Edit PostPixelShader.hlsl, then send it to the running console:

node xbox/tools/live.mjs shader xbox/native-bios/PostPixelShader.hlsl
node xbox/tools/live.mjs shader-reset

The Xbox compiles HLSL on a worker thread and swaps the pixel shader between frames. No game restart, Windows build, commit, or package install is needed. The command waits for the console to acknowledge that exact upload and prints compiler diagnostics on failure; a failed edit leaves the current shader intact. shader-reset restores the packaged effect. The last uploaded source is loaded again when the app starts, until reset.

Use main, shader model ps_5_0, and the input/resources in PostPixelShader.hlsl: scene t0, depth t1, sampler s0, constants b0. Source is capped at 64 KiB and includes are disabled. The post shader runs before HUD/debug overlays, so its effects cannot blur those overlays. This loader and the compiler dependency are omitted with /p:AcDevLivePiece=0.

AppVeyor builds NativeBios.sln for Release x64 and emits the distinct xbox-native-bios-x64 sideload artifact. Assets and its temporary development certificate are generated by appveyor.yml.

Vendored interpreter #

third_party/quickjs-ng is QuickJS-ng v0.15.1, pinned from the upstream release archive with SHA-256:

c4e813951b7c46845096a948e978c620b11ab4cf5fd622ca09c727ec31f42623

Only the four core library translation units and their generated headers are vendored; the CLI and libc bindings are deliberately excluded. QuickJS-ng is MIT licensed; its unmodified license is included beside the source.

Revision 55 adds skateAudio(speed, volume), a separate persistent wheel-rumble voice. Speed is normalized 0–1 and volume is clamped 0–0.5; zero mutes it. The synthesized loop is allocated once per sample rate, alongside the motor.