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 first package boots a bundled JavaScript smoke piece. Press A/B/X/Y to change the Direct3D clear color and submit an XAudio2 tone. 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, continuous oscillator / oscillatorStop, controllers, gamepad, capabilities, runtime, the host-mediated ac feed, and bounded structured telemetry. 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.

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 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

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.

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 #

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.