Winget & the Xbox Store & some Google Play!
SimpliPlay's going to be on Winget now, and is also on the official Xbox Store RIGHT NOW, AND is even in the testing phase on Google Play! Man, a lot of news all at once, huh?! I'm gonna go through this sort of slowly though.
Xbox
You may be thinking... didn't I just GIVE UP on Xbox?? Well, not completely. I was bored one day and looked in my messy Downloads folder for a build of the UWP app. Surprisingly, a working build was there, compiled and all!
But unfortunately, the Windows VM I'd used to build the app was gone... (okay, not completely gone, I have it on a hard drive, but still) So I decided I'd manually patch the app via... just unzipping and rezipping the package.
And when it came time to publish to Microsoft, I self-signed it on GitHub Actions using the windows-latest
runner, so MS wouldn't reject it during the upload checks.
While I was patching, all the files I were patching strictly mentioned NOT to patch them... but it's on the store now, so who cares really!
I also fixed up D-pad navigation (again), and some other bugs, and then finally had to wait 48 hours for the app to pass cert... my worst nightmare. I'm really impatient when it comes to these kinds of things.
After the app passed certification (I had to make the app Xbox-only, as before that it was tested on devices it was obviously never meant to run on, crashed, and then got failed in cert), I tested out some patches, however, I came across some dependency related issues with VCLibs... and it's unfortunately what caused the app to fail to install on my Xbox. You see, the last time I used Dev Mode on my Xbox, it screwed up everything. Game captures were lost, corrupted data was there (I think), and the like, and I had installed VCLibs in Dev Mode.
So trying to reinstall it, but with an app, in retail mode led to some issues... man...
Well, if you want to install the app, search up "SimpliPlay" on the Store on your Xbox One or newer, and it should pop up!
Winget
Fresh on the heels of a dude who'd finally had an app published on the Xbox Store... guess what amazing endeavor he'd fly into next... and yes, this is obviously way too dramatic but it's stupid and funny so whatever I guess... Winget. Yep, it's Winget. Some of you may not know what Winget even IS, so I'll give you a headstart!
Winget's a package manager included with Windows 11 PCs (and some newer versions of Windows 10). If you've heard of Chocolatey, this is basically the alternative... but straight from the dudes who created Xbox.
All you have to do to install an app is go into Command Prompt, and run
winget install [some-package-name-here]
Once it's finished installing, that's it! It's really similar to Homebrew as well, but for Windows. However, there's a reason I can't publish to Homebrew... I have to pay a $99/yr signing fee to Apple. And they have notability guidelines for GitHub repos... and since my app isn't meant for tech-savvy people, it literally fails to meet the GitHub minimum interactions requirements, by a lot. I guess SimpliPlay falls into the exceptions, though they have in their policies???? I dunno, really. But that's another story.
Anyway, I automated the submission process for Winget, but had to use a classic PAT (personal access token). There're drawbacks to this, so I used a bot account instead, because with a classic token, if anyone uses it, they can fake being as me with my account, and since my account has many public repos that SHOULDN'T be hacked, I used a bot account.
Google Play
Okay, I tried publishing the Android version to Google Play, but hear me out. It's in the closed testing phase, so I gotta get 12 people who are willing to test it for 14 days straight, maybe a few minutes a day. Man... if only me in 2023 had had the boredom to create a Google Play account, then I could skip the testing requirements since they only added it after that. But, anyway, it's on Google Play... sort of. Also, I need every tester's email... that's even worse for any random person who really wants to test it. But if you REALLY want to, email me at personal@anirudhsevugan.me... but I might not respond.
Welp, long story short: boredom really is good for you. I started all of this stuff because I was bored, and you can too!
It obviously doesn't have to be messing around with tech to ridiculous levels! it can be anything you like :D!!!
Anyway, peace out, and see you next time!