Funny comparison: by the time I have completely finished loading everything (full world state, all assets) and brought up the game, editor and Live++, UE5 hasn't even brought up its splash screen ;). Still love working on my own tech.

Stefan Reinalter@molecularmusing.bsky.social · 2d ago

Loading all 1.6GB of current assets (textures & meshes) in 570ms on my 10-year old machine (with a 2080 Ti) using IOCP and unbuffered async reads. Happy for now with this! Final optimization for deployment: loading from a single compressed archive instead of N files.

Loading all 1.6GB of current assets (textures & meshes) in 570ms on my 10-year old machine (with a 2080 Ti) using IOCP and unbuffered async reads. Happy for now with this! Final optimization for deployment: loading from a single compressed archive instead of N files.

I found one more thing and got it down to ~20ms. This is slightly more than one frame when running at 60FPS. Here's a video showing it in action. I intentionally click on "Start Without Debugging" so you can see the time it takes for the window to appear.

Stefan Reinalter@molecularmusing.bsky.social · 2w ago

About a month ago I mentioned the "time to first present" in my engine being 50ms from process start, and that there aren't any dynamic initializers that run before main(). The question came up how to inspect the initializers, so here's me following up with code: #cpp

dear imgui 1.92.9 released! github.com/ocornut/imgu... - new liveedit on/off settings and defaults - tables track topology changes - metal4 rendering backend - timestamped settings entries (for cleanup etc.) - 50+ other changes/fixes (fonts, multi-select, popups, backends etc.).

About a month ago I mentioned the "time to first present" in my engine being 50ms from process start, and that there aren't any dynamic initializers that run before main(). The question came up how to inspect the initializers, so here's me following up with code: #cpp

working on a new project for @aftermath.site: a semi-comprehensive, regularly-updated list of every game studio that refuses to use AI. if that sounds like your studio, message me with the reason(s) why as well as basic details about what you make. DMs open and email is nathan@aftermath.site

The way fromsoft questlines work is this: Imagine you are playing D&D. Your party meets a wizard in the forest, and tells you that the nearby town is full of evil cultists. Please, dear adventurers, do something.

I am so tired of people who can't code telling me about how AI helps them code to 1% of the ability of a professional, which sure is 10x for them. It's like me telling people that the invention of music theory will make actual musicians obsolete because now I, too, can write chords that sound OK.

TinyBVH has just been 𝘂𝗽𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝟭.𝟴.𝟬. For CPU ray tracing, it is now the fastest option in most cases - Outperforming Intel Embree and Madmann91 for BVH build time and single-ray performance. On GPU, performance exceeds 4B rays per second - 4 rays per pixel at 4k/120Hz. github.com/jbikker/tiny...

Knowing that this might be the last DOOM done by id Software, running on idTech, just hits different. Seeing the original DOOM run smoothly on a 386 was what made me want to work in the games industry. A *highly* profitable company killed that and decades of knowledge and tech.

God superluminal may just be the best piece of software I have used in years, just absolutely amazing. Buttery smooth, amazing tooling for timings, finding duplicate calls, distribution, histograms & amazingly a in text code breakdown of how long func took. Makes me want to profile everything.

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!

Live++@liveplusplus.bsky.social · 4w ago

Live++ 2.11.3 out now! liveplusplus.tech/releases.html Fixed a few warnings when using pure C compilers, improved compatibility with Clang (especially around dynamic initializers), full support for VS 2026 in all examples. #cpp

i feel like the whole funding structure of games has to change, top down. 20bn annual revenue, afaik net profitable... *but not enough* so you axe 3200 ppls jobs. its nuts. i rag on sony execs but its the same for them: playstation is only seen as a cost center by the wider sony. 'y u no make mor?'

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.

If they ended up decimating id Software's tech team then I have no faith in anything they'll ever do again under the current leadership. Between last week and today's news...I just don't know what to say at this point.

"One billion players per day." This industry is so fucked.

Fully agree with Alex, also outside of game dev. Don't try to fix a bug until you 100% understand what the cause is. That's the difference between a real fix and a duct tape solution that keeps coming back to bite you when you least expect it.

mmalex@mmalex.bsky.social · last mo.

my #1 grizzly beard protip for (game) dev is: if you have a bug that you dont understand the cause of immediately, dont try to fix it; add & iterate visualization / inspection tools until the cause is plain to see. the accumulation of 'observability' in your system's state will pay off many times

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.

now that it's been a few years we can finally see the sheer scope of inspirational works of art created by AI

People saying "AI is a powerful multiplier" are rightfully vindicated - it's definitively a RAM price multiplier.

I'm here yet again to tell you that Live++ is making coding so much easier :') I had a ton of debug test codes to tweak and rather than adding variables I'm just changing the code.

I'm not using it every day depending on what I'm doing, but man, hot-reload of C++ (using Live++) is a life-saver for gameplay iteration. I remember back when I was building my VR app, I would not only have to close/compile/run but also often take the headset off and on. Oof.

Companies that were stressing about GPL contamination for a couple decades are now happily using generative AI tools that were trained on GPL code.

100 times this! I've seen a few engines over the years, and if all you ever knew was UE, those other engines would blow off your socks *so* much. UE has to be generic and cater to a larger audience and types of games, with bespoke tech you can do *much* better!

mmalex@mmalex.bsky.social · 2mo ago

in particular, on the unsexy parts of game engines: build times, artist workflows, qa integration, localisation, collaboration... all the public engines set such an insanely low bar here, as everyone focuses on the fancy gfx... i remember seeing naughtydogs internal review/qa/bug/annotation/

Read the questions and discussions as well. As much as I agree with Haley, I'm pretty sure that Big Companies don't actually give a shit about this (as we've seen in this whole AI race), and if anything even happens, it will be a proverbial slap on the wrist for whomever is involved.

Haley MacLean@haleyfax.bsky.social · 2mo ago

ahem, AI CANNOT ASSIGN COPYRIGHT. YOU WILL NOT OWN THE THINGS THIS THING MAKES EVEN IF THEY TRY AND ASSIGN IT TO YOU. USING THIS WOULD TECHNICALLY BE IN VIOLATION OF 100% OF PUBLISHER AGREEMENTS I HAVE SEEN

july 7

When folks say they have 10x'd their productivity with AI, most of the time this is what is actually happening:

Especially because I see so many folks talking about using AI to generate 10x more 'artifacts', and arguing that therefore they are 10x more productive. 10x of documents nobody reads it's 10 x 0 = 0

The Cost of AI alextardif.com/AI.html

I have released my level scripting i/o system, it's called JoeIO and it works great for me and at work but it's early so be gentle and just holler if you come across any weirdness. An explanatory video is below www.joewintergreen.com/joeio-a-leve...

Joe Wintergreen@joewintergreen.com · 5mo ago

I spent some of this week making an I/O system for level scripting in Unreal for @sleightofhand.game! I have long had thoughts on why these kick ass. Here's an unusually long blog post on: -why these kick ass -why they are necessary -how mine works -etc etc www.joewintergreen.com/i-o-systems-...