Microsoft UWP Discussion

[Jay]

UWP is indeed gated behind the Microsoft store on Windows. There has been no suggestion that this will change and since this is Window's store big selling point, what incentive is there for Microsoft to open it up.

many reasons, make Windows as a whole more secure, run better, etc etc.
anyway they've already said that it's open to be used by others, unless you think after them keep repeating that, that their just lying?

edit : Maybe you've not heard them say it, it's been brought up a few times already

 

[mrcorbo]

My understanding is that this is quite limited and not suitable for widespread distribution. Am I mistaken?

Good information here.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I'm guessing you're talking about Bethesda-hosted mods as opposed to Nexus mods. Sorry, I was talking about the latter.

Yes. It's why I've been careful to state Fallout 4 style of mods for UWP. I couldn't think of a better way to describe it at the time.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Yah, they've announced that any store can host UWP apps, as far as I know.

This is the first I've read of this and googling produces nothing. The side-loading process is incredibly laborious and no user is going to put up with that assuming it's even possible to distribute apps commercially outside of Microsoft's store.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Good information here.

Yes, that re-affirms my understanding. UWP is Microsoft store only. side-loading is for app/device testing and there is no viable way to distribute commercially outside of Microsoft's store.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Good information here.

Oh my, that's quite a bit more open than I had previously thought and I already knew about the sideloading of apps.

Regards,
SB

 

[Scott_Arm]

This is the first I've read of this and googling produces nothing. The side-loading process is incredibly laborious and no user is going to put up with that assuming it's even possible to distribute apps commercially outside of Microsoft's store.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/...-future-in-which-microsoft-crushes-steam.aspx

"As stated previously, the Universal Windows Platform is a fully open ecosystem that is available to every developer, and can be supported by any store. It’s early, and we recognize there is still work to be done, but we want to make Windows the best development platform regardless of technologies used."

 

[mrcorbo]

Yes, that re-affirms my understanding. UWP is Microsoft store only. side-loading is for app/device testing and there is no viable way to distribute commercially outside of Microsoft's store.

I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion from the information presented.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/...-future-in-which-microsoft-crushes-steam.aspx

But right now the MSDN tools only lets you publish the UWP packages to Microsoft's store, so uhhhhh? How do other stores support UWP? How is that open?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion from the information presented.

Try MSDN's own information.

 

[Scott_Arm]

But right now the MSDN tools only lets you publish the UWP packages to Microsoft's store, so uhhhhh? How do other stores support UWP? How is that open?

I imagine other stores have their own tools for publishing apps. Besides that, it appears you can create your own UWP app with an msi installer and host it wherever you want.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

But right now the MSDN tools only lets you publish the UWP packages to Microsoft's store, so uhhhhh? How do other stores support UWP? How is that open?

I'd imagine all that stuff would be between the interested store and Microsoft. Until a 3rd party storefront starts to offer UWP applications, it's hard to offer details to developers as implementation details for that storefront would presumably be determined by that store.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I imagine other stores have their own tools for publishing apps. Besides that, it appears you can create your own UWP app with an msi installer and host it wherever you want.

Yeah, but this is the MSDN process to sideload a UWP app from the user's perspective.

I'd imagine all that stuff would be between the interested store and Microsoft. Until a 3rd party storefront starts to offer UWP applications, it's hard to offer details to developers as implementation details for that storefront would presumably be determined by that store.

You can publish to Steam how you like, that's why indie's love it and you can bundle games that run on uPlay and Origin. There is no real limitations. That's the industry standard in PC gaming.

 

[Jay]

Yeah, but this is the MSDN process to sideload a UWP app from the user's perspective.

if you get it from another store you wouldn't be sideloading it.
you only need to do that if you downloaded it from a website or something.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

if you get it from another store you wouldn't be sideloading it.

Very true. Please outline the process for publishing to another store.

I'll wait here.

 

[mrcorbo]

Yeah, but this is the MSDN process to sideload a UWP app from the user's perspective.

The method described in the link I shared uses standard OS functions and would result in an standard Microsoft installer package that would, to the user, seem no different than installing any other app that used the standard MS installer. Any other installation process can, by calling these same functions, enable a UWP app to be sideloaded the same way. There is certainly an argument to be made whether there is adequate incentive for developers to develop PC games using UWP, but this pretty definitively shows that UWP apps *can* be distributed outside of the Windows Store. And this is without MS going out of their way to enable it.

 

[BRiT]

Very true. Please outline the process for publishing to another store.

I'll wait here.

It all depends on the other stores.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The method described in the link I shared uses standard OS functions and would result in an standard Microsoft installer package that would, to the user, seem no different than installing any other app that used the standard MS installer.

Take a second look. You a) need to enable developer mode on Windows, b) you need developer tools to actually sideload the package, c) you need to manually copy folders and d) you have to run the package from the shell.

But sure, apart from that, exactly like any other app.

It all depends on the other stores.

And like I said above, you can 'publish' any raw executable or installer package to Steam. This is one of Steam's biggest draws - the lack of making devs jump through hoops. It's partly this flexibility that let Hello Games publish No Man's Sky without a required runtime (vcredist).

 

[mrcorbo]

Take a second look. You a) need to enable developer mode on Windows, b) you need developer tools to actually sideload the package, c) you need to manually copy folders and d) you have to run the package from the shell.

But sure, apart from that, exactly like any other app.

From the readme:

StandaloneMsi
This folder contains scripts that packages an appx file into an msi. It will also embed an installation script that will enable sideloading in the registry, trust the application cert if it is not already trusted and deploy the application. Currently this script is a proof of concept with hardcoded values, but later on it will be able to wrap any appx or appx bundle like this and read all the relevant information from the package directly.

How it works
The Wix toolset is used to create a standard microsoft installer package. Msi files basically do two things, copy files and run scripts. The generated msi will extract the appx file, certificate and dependencies and then execute an included powershell script that uses the Add-AppxPackage cmndlet to install the appx. The script also checks if the certificate for the application is trusted by the local machine and if sideloading is enabled, if not it performs these actions.

Limitations
The scripts in this folder are at a proof of concept stage, the current implementation has several limitations

• Uninstallation is currently not implemented, but an emptry script is in place. When uninstalling the msi, the application will still be installed
• The msi installs the appx by extracting it to a folder in program files, before installing them into the uwp system. this means that the application is takeing up twice the disk space it really needs. In a future version, this temporary copy of the appx will be removed
• Currently the values in the wix file are hardcoded, in a future version these will be read from the appx package directly
• When installing appx apps via powershell or the packaging apis, its assumed that the capabilities the app demands are already approved by the users. The msis generated by this script do not currently display these to the users, or any other dialog boxes, it just installs the app. This means that the user is currently never told about what capabilties the app demands, but that is on the otherhand how win32 apps work today.

I don't know if it's possible to unset the flag that enables sideloading once the app is installed and have the app installed by this method still work, but other than that this proof-of-concept pretty clearly works, from a user perspective, exactly the way I am representing it.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Take a second look. You a) need to enable developer mode on Windows, b) you need developer tools to actually sideload the package, c) you need to manually copy folders and d) you have to run the package from the shell.

That's how Microsoft would like you to do it, but you don't have to do it that way as the link that Mrcorbo posted details.

Regards,
SB