Guerrilla Games' Live++: A Bag of Tricks

Guerrilla Games has quietly dropped a PDF of slides titled "Live++: A Bag of Tricks" that digs into practical techniques for live-coding C++. It has been reported that the deck tackles real-world pain points—faster iteration, preserving in-memory state, and patching running binaries—stuff that makes long compile cycles feel quaint. For developers who’ve long dreamed of changing code without restarting the whole engine, these slides read like a toolbox handed over mid-sprint.

What the slides reportedly cover

Among the highlights, it has been reported that the presentation walks through low-level approaches: symbol handling, memory layout management, and strategies for applying binary patches safely while a process runs. There are allegedly tips for integrating Live++ into build systems and editor workflows, plus examples in C++—slides, not a tutorial, but enough to make a skilled engineer nod and say, “Okay, now that’s clever.” Think of it as a practical riff on hot-reload ideas you’ve seen from Unity and Unreal, but tuned for the gritty realities of native C++ engines.

Why game developers should care

Why does this matter? Because minutes add up, and iteration time is the enemy of creative momentum. Shaving even small chunks off the edit-compile-run loop changes how teams experiment and fix bugs. The emotional payoff is obvious: fewer interruption points, more flow. For studios wrestling with gigantic codebases and demanding performance budgets, techniques that preserve state across patches can be a game-changer.

Caveats and next steps

A note of caution: it has been reported that live binary patching brings risks—stability, security, and debugging complexity are not magically solved. Use in production? Allegedly not a great idea without rigorous safeguards. Still, for dev builds and rapid iteration, the slides seem to offer a pragmatic, battle-tested set of tricks. Read the deck yourself here: https://liveplusplus.tech/downloads/Guerrilla_Games_2026_Live++_A_Bag_of_Tricks.pdf and decide whether this is the little bit of sorcery your pipeline needs.

Sources: liveplusplus.tech, Lobsters