Xbox kinda works!

After months of trying, my results were quite interesting.

After finding several bugs in my code, I fixed all of them and started fresh in Visual Studio on my Windows ARM64 VM, by cloning from Git. I had attempted to use my actual Xbox with Dev Mode, and succeeded, but for a few hours it made my Xbox act up while playing games. This went away the next day, thankfully. Sadly, one of the apps I had installed moved/deleted all of my local Xbox captures so they are no longer accessible in the Captures menu. I had tons of captures on there. Oh, well. It wasn't the end of the world, and what I was about to learn was more than worth the sacrifice. I still remember a lot of the captures though.

So, let's start from the top!

After booting into Dev Mode, I had to reconnect my Xbox to Wi-Fi and since Remote Play didn't work with Dev Mode, take over the TV. After that I went into the Device Portal and realized I had to sign my MSIX. Xbox Dev Mode told me so... So I went through the process, painstakingly finding signtool.exe and using it to sign my app in Powershell.

After that was done, I launched my MSIX and was disappointed to see it failed to launch properly. After an hour or two, I realized it was attempting to access WebAssets and it was missing. Sadly, I could not recompile my app (to an MSIX anyway), because my VM was 4:3, and VS Studio only cooperates well with 16:9, and preferably, real hardware.

So I attempted to use MakeAppX.exe and MSBuild.exe both to build an MSIX/APPX, and both failed. MSBuild.exe went OK, but it didn't save the build anywhere that I could access. (I had 10+ PowerShell scripts leftover from attempting different ways of using MSBuild. Only a few worked properly to an extent.) MakeAppX.exe on the other hand failed to do anything at all.

Then, I decided to start debugging on my VM. It launched but showed a white screen. After a few retries, I figured out I had to add a direct compiler instruction to the .csproj file to add WebAssets to the root of the package directory.

After that, for the first time, the UWP app launched, and could (thankfully), play media properly. Both files and URLs worked fine. So, I knew that it would work on Xbox. As a last ditch resort, I tried to use remote debugging, but apparently Microsoft treates their guides like expired, canned food. The guides were vague and I couldn't understand them at all. The menus they asked me to use had changed since the guide was made, a lot, to the point where I had no choice but to (temporarily) give up.

As a last-LAST ditch resort, I tried to use loose files for Xbox Dev Mode, but it failed to launch at all and didn't even TRY to access WebAssets, which meant that I needed a real Windows PC. Fortunately, I do have a way to get one. But that'll have to wait for a while.

So, for now, SimpliPlay Xbox is on hold. But if you want to see how it looks on Windows in debug mode, see it on YouTube! At least now I know it will work on Xbox. If any of you are willing to compile the source code for me on the right hardware (if I don't do it soon enough), you can contact me at [personal at anirudhsevugan dot me].