xprototype

Prototype Release: xprototype (Updated)

Date: 14.12.2025 

Project Focus: Establishing core architecture, CPU emulation, network emulation, and advanced safety handling.

New Features & Major Enhancements

The primary focus of this update was to drastically enhance the experimental NetSwitch feature, transforming it from a simple string matcher into a functional mini-browser with real-world connectivity and robust error handling.

1. Enhanced Internet Feature: NetSwitch (Major Update)

NetSwitch has been completely overhauled to simulate real-world browser functionality and resilience.

• Real HTTP Connectivity: NetSwitch now utilizes the HTTPRequest node to fetch actual HTML content from the live web.
• Web-to-BBCode Rendering: Fetched HTML is processed and translated into BBCode, allowing for the display of basic structure, text, and clickable links within the console UI.
• Image Loading & Caching (CRITICAL FIX):
  • Images are downloaded asynchronously and saved to a temporary user:// directory.
  • The critical error regarding the invalid Godot 4 load_from_buffer function was fixed by implementing specific load_png_from_buffer and load_jpg_from_buffer methods. This ensures images are correctly decoded, cached, and displayed.
  • Cleanup: Temporary image files are now automatically deleted from the disk when the NetSwitch panel is closed or returned to the home screen.
• Safety & URL Normalization: Implemented advanced checks to automatically prepend https:// and handle common URL formats (e.g., removing www.).
• Emulated Search Engine: The input field now detects prefix commands like google: or duckduckgo: and automatically formats the URL to perform a search query, making the console feel more functional. [experimental]
• Homepage & Navigation:
  • Added a dedicated NETSWITCH Home Page with pre-configured, working links for text-only sites.

2. Core Architecture & Safety

• Asynchronous Processing: The system continues to use Godot's await keyword for parallel processing simulation, ensuring core processes are non-blocking and yield instantly to user commands.
• Secure Logging Bridge: The _netswitch_log_message bridge remains secure, ensuring internal network events are passed safely back to the main system console, preventing crashes and offering clear, color-coded diagnostic feedback.

Changes, Improvements & Fixes

• UX/Navigation: Added dedicated Home Page and navigation logic to the NetSwitch panel, improving user flow.
• Error Reporting: Enhanced logging to specifically report failed image formats, connection timeouts, and HTTP status codes, providing better insight into network errors.
• Cleanup: Implemented automatic deletion of temporary files upon browser closure, ensuring the application does not clutter the user's local directory.

Known Issues & Future Plans

Known Issues (To be addressed soon):

• The system currently relies on Godot's native thread-like features (await) for parallelism simulation; implementing full, dedicated thread management within the GDScript layer is a future goal.
• NetSwitch's HTML parsing is rudimentary (BBCode-based) and cannot handle complex layouts, CSS, or JavaScript elements found on modern websites.

Stay tuned for more updates!