Stefan Reinalter

Founder of Molecular Matters • C++ & low-level programming • Created Live++ (@liveplusplus)
https://liveplusplus.tech

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molecularmusing@mastodon-gamedev-place.mostr.pub

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Last Notes

2026-08-15 20:43:53 UTC

I was working on something today that made me realise just how profoundly different working with hot-reload for *everything* (assets & all code) is.
I often hear people say "my compile times are short, I don't need it" and I think they're missing the point.
Thread:

2026-07-16 12:06:29 UTC

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@nprofile…5x8e Where did you go to in Austria?

2026-07-08 17:47:29 UTC

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@nprofile…x9ps Absolutely!
He has become my LLVM/Clang go-to person over the years, and he's always very helpful with repros and analysis whenever they run into any problems.

2026-07-08 12:49:40 UTC

Most of the work went into reconstructing the dynamic initializers by cross-referencing COFF groups in the PDB with sections in the object file.
Extra shout out to Alexandre Ganea from Haven for all his help!
#nevent1q…dx6k

2026-07-07 13:35:24 UTC

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@nprofile…x9ps Totally understandable.
Latest news felt like a punch to the gut, and I'm not even affected directly.
They're killing the industry we're all part of, don't hesitate to throw decades of tech and knowledge away (especially id Tech) in the name of "need moar money!" while spending yet another $2.5B on AI and complaining about HW prices they are partly responsible for.
Completely lost the plot on everything.

2026-07-07 13:29:14 UTC

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@nprofile…x9ps I'm so sorry.
There doesn't seem to be any logic behind their statements and actions.

2026-07-07 13:14:05 UTC

I think the next 2-3 years might be the best for indie developers.
As big corporations work more towards killing the AAA industry and pivoting to UE6, more and more games will begin to look the same and have similar AI-generated content.
Your time to shine as a solo dev.

2026-07-03 15:14:18 UTC

Most people know my stance on it, but it has to be said at this point:
As long as Live++ is 100% under my control, there won't be any AI feature of any kind in it, and exactly 0% of its code will be written by any AI.
Same for future releases of other tools.

2026-04-28 07:26:18 UTC

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@nprofile…ftfu @nprofile…hm63 @nprofile…valu To me, trivial serialization is a *large* benefit. I can literally read the entire world state with a single read from disk.
Similarly, undo/redo of world state in the editor is a memcpy/compressing to memory/decompressing from memory.
Can't stress enough how amazing that feels. No more "that thing you added broke Undo".

2026-04-27 16:45:18 UTC

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@nprofile…valu @nprofile…hm63 Yep.
E.g. game objects on a map store an intrusive linked list of triggers using indices, which is used for not having something silly like an std::vector per object, and for trivial serialization. These triggers fire when a certain event happens.
The actual bulk of the work is done in the map's Tick() though, where I iterate through the array of triggers and evaluate them.

2026-04-13 09:08:34 UTC

Here are the slides for my "Live++: A Bag of Tricks" talk presented at Guerrilla Games last Friday.
Enjoy!
PPTX:
https://liveplusplus.tech/downloads/Guerrilla_Games_2026_Live++_A_Bag_of_Tricks.pptx
PDF:
https://liveplusplus.tech/downloads/Guerrilla_Games_2026_Live++_A_Bag_of_Tricks.pdf
#cpp

2026-04-10 22:19:10 UTC

Gave a talk at Guerrilla Games this morning (slides coming on Monday).
Met a bunch of very welcoming, fun and smart people and the tech they built is nothing short of amazing!
Had lots of fun hanging out with you folks, thanks so much @nprofile…cymr for inviting me!

2026-04-08 16:50:54 UTC

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@nprofile…valu I think most games will likely need both? As in, there will be gameplay code where it makes the most sense to traverse the list of entity A, then B, then C, so jumping around in memory.
But for things like e.g. an I/O system I can see all actions being tested and performed one after the other while processing the whole array of all I/Os.

2026-04-08 07:07:18 UTC

Large-array index-based intrusive linked lists are underrated for fully dynamic gameplay.
Every operation is O(1), no memory allocation anywhere, serialization of the whole tree-like data structure is a single memcpy.
For performance, simply work on the large array in bulk.

2026-04-04 09:33:05 UTC

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@nprofile…valu Lol, so true!
Such a clown show.

2026-04-04 07:53:21 UTC

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@nprofile…valu Is this how some people drive their LLMs?
Oh boy, I would be embarrased if the whole world could see me going "here's the whole post, do it like this", "this one's also nice", "hey this doesn't work".
FFS, if you still have half a brain left, please use it. Or we'll end up with "engineers" watering their plants with soft drinks.

2026-02-25 17:04:12 UTC

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@nprofile…valu You asked for it:
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/132/351/142/756/201/original/9cdcbe7ec0c9406a.mp4

2026-02-24 20:51:51 UTC

Hot take:
If you're writing ImGui-style code in C++ without any kind of code hot-reload, you're holding your computer wrong.

2025-12-22 20:06:12 UTC

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@nprofile…e330 Oh no no no, I'm truly sorry for your loss. Tigger was such a beautiful boy, and I'm sure he got to live the best of lifes with you.

2025-11-09 17:42:11 UTC

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@nprofile…rtt8 When.

2025-11-09 17:34:22 UTC

Interesting read with explicit numbers:
https://www.theringer.com/2025/11/04/tech/ai-bubble-burst-popping-explained-collapse-or-not-chatgpt

2025-11-09 10:55:05 UTC

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@nprofile…e330 @nprofile…lldj I dare you to compile it from source once just to have that experience.

2025-11-08 23:31:10 UTC

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@nprofile…e330 @nprofile…lldj You already know how ;)

2025-06-24 14:20:05 UTC

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@nprofile…gvnm The comments are the kind of comments that would make me go "got it, thanks, that report will be my first and my last one".

2023-09-01 08:25:38 UTC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewbkdxskl7I
"Why does the Live++ video feature Quake? Isn't that quite old?"
Good question!
It's a showcase to convey the fact that your C/C++ code doesn't have to be written with Live++ in mind.
Quake is 27 years old by now, Live++ wasn't around back then.
#gamedev #cpp