Mikko Mononen

Coder and woodworker. Author of Recast&Detour and NanoVG. Previously at Epic Games, Unity, Tinkercad, Crytek, demoscene.

https://github.com/memononen

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Last Notes

2026-10-25 09:35:14 UTC

I'm looking for references to systems that traverse static tree like structures which can contain references to dynamic state.
An example could be an UI layout with data bindings.
My best reference so far is XAML, I built similarish system for UEs StateTrees, but I would like to know if there's something out there that I'm missing. Maybe such systems have name?

2026-08-27 07:14:59 UTC

I wonder how people handle (modal) dialog flows in their imgui apps?
I'm testing a message idea, where you can post a message and accept it (a bit dear imgui drag'n'drop style). The idea being that you have the whole sequence in one place.
https://gist.github.com/memononen/8724718286d6ec3e1ed42ed92cd1a8bc
So far so good, I wonder what other's use.

2026-08-20 13:54:13 UTC

Hello! I'm looking for a job, programming stuff from games to simulations to tools.
Resume: https://gist.github.com/memononen/974cca4751739fbfe0f2b99b40eaf147
I've been recovering from burnout the past couple of years, hence the gap in the CV.
Remote or in Helsinki area.
I have a couple of leads in the works, reaching out to see if there are any opportunities that I have missed.
Not like the best time to look for a games job, interested to try out adjacent fields too.

2026-08-10 14:10:05 UTC

This is pretty cool ECS presentation from Epic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXA8axmAb-U
I think it has pretty interesting take how to compose the data. It composes larger SoA "components" from multiple fragments. Essentially, splitting the data so that you get as sequential reads/writes as possible.
I think the hardest thing for me working on Mass was to shed the idea that a component is not something you'd interact as a designer, it's just part of the computation model.

2026-07-29 22:08:58 UTC

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@nprofile…j05z I guess you could make it a bit better if you integrated the tech support directly into the product.

2026-07-18 09:57:44 UTC

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@nprofile…j05z @nprofile…73pp when i was young people liked MMOs.

2026-07-18 09:38:22 UTC

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@nprofile…73pp how about a game engine?

2026-07-07 19:27:25 UTC

I don't know if anyone needs this, but here's COLRv0/1 rendering extension to stb_truetype.
https://codeberg.org/memononen/colr_truetype

2026-07-06 18:04:49 UTC

Dusted off an old project, which is OTF COLRv0/1 support for stb_tt. It's a 1.5k line file that leeches off of stb_tt, and uses it to rasterize the masks, pokes around a bit to grab the right tables.
Parsing the data was quite straight forward, spent most of the time flipping the transformation matrix multiply orders until things started to work.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/874/329/307/483/495/original/5be2e27463d1251b.mp4

2026-06-13 19:19:42 UTC

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@nprofile…4l5v @nprofile…5x8e maybe you should split your difference in half (with hyperplane of your choice).

2026-05-15 12:13:33 UTC

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@nprofile…5x8e Have you by any chance used CLion + lldb + python debug formatters? Having trouble getting the nice things I just made for vs code to work there.

2026-05-15 08:28:33 UTC

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@nprofile…5x8e I'm tempted too. Sounds like your preferences match mine.
I've seen some people sort out the CLion slowness by just throwing memory at it, but not the option for me on my 16GB laptop. I mean, all I want is to edit ~20 .c files :)
Large files seems to be the ultimate nemesis for Rider/CLion. I was working on dear imgui stuff, and those 20k files just bogged things down.

2026-05-15 07:26:25 UTC

I'm back to VS code for my "let's find cross platform c++ ide" journey.
Editing, compiling and debugging being different modalities in vs code is annoying. A lot of click-ty click.
The random "copy/paste does not work" still pisses me off the most.
Looks like it's Monaco issue (the VS code editor), as I get the same issue in Godbolt too. It's a know issue :(
https://github.com/microsoft/monaco-editor/issues/4855
Found new shortcut it fix it, though, press alt. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2026-05-10 18:18:42 UTC

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@nprofile…5x8e Finnish translation: (profanity warning) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kyrp%C3%A4_otsassa

2026-05-01 10:04:12 UTC

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@nprofile…hm63 not sure if you identify as a dummy, but this could fit your requirements: https://gargaj.github.io/demos-for-dummies

2026-04-29 08:07:20 UTC

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@nprofile…5x8e I really love Rider/Clion UX, but the latency is just insane (I have a bit older laptop too).
I tried zed, it's supposed to support C/C++ out of the box, but I could not figure it out.
I tried 10x on windows, really nice and fast editor, but no debugger (plays well with VS, though), and no cross platform.
Not testing VS code again. I don't like the UX. All kinds of buttons all over the place, half of then not working until you config something somewhere.

2026-04-29 07:54:24 UTC

The usual VS Code experience:
- I'd like to see struct sizes as tooltips, kinda miss that from Rider
- Yes we can, just use clangd!
- <Installs clangd extension>
- I need compile_commands.json, cmake can do it for you!
- <trying to find the setting, it's on, billion questions on the net why it does not work on windows>
- Yes, it does not work on windows, you need to use some other build system!
- <finds 10 page blog post about enabling ninja builds>
- <picks pen, paper, and calculator...>

2026-03-30 05:36:40 UTC

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@nprofile…valu @nprofile…rhdc that is excellent point.

2026-03-30 05:31:06 UTC

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@nprofile…valu I've been working on such a niche things recently, that I'm not too focused on the stars :) But it does worry me that the work is not discoverable at all (or so I thought). It's nice to see that at least the other search engines discover it.

2026-03-29 18:35:41 UTC

I'm pondering to move my projects to codeberg every other week, but the thing that holds me back is visibility. When searching for stuff, I have yet to get any hits on codeberg, except few pages meant to confuse AI.
Could be also that there just is no volume yet, but I wonder if someone has different experience?
For example Chipmunk 2D has repo in codeberg, but it is nowhere to be found in the first 10 pages on google.

2026-03-27 07:07:30 UTC

I have been working on data inheritance recently. The kind of stuff that you usually see with prefabs, but I believe that all the assets should support data inheritance.
I just released an article how to do that on property and container level. It tries to cover both the low level bits and the UI. It's one of those problems that have to be worked as a whole.
https://github.com/memononen/data_inheritance
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/299/839/707/245/283/original/f62901d13cd0e863.png

2026-03-19 14:00:07 UTC

Ok... I think I'm finally done with the examples I wanted to cover.
From single value override, to enum flags, to sets, to sorted arrays, to lookup tables (aka ordered maps) to ordering using global ids.
Let's see if my idea of gradually increasing the complexity works out in writing too :)
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/256/186/406/938/640/original/9f95e37b86f63ffd.png

2026-03-10 06:46:51 UTC

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@nprofile…wxct Congrats!!

2026-02-21 11:14:27 UTC

Can someone recommend easy to integrate (to CMake project) C API for Dear Imgui?
As far as I can understand the official dear_bindings does not have C API for the backends.

2026-01-16 17:23:31 UTC

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@nprofile…valu I have implemented a bunch of simple editors where undo would just serialize the whole document to disk. and redo loads the previous version. Surely not scalable, but works :)

2026-01-16 10:53:07 UTC

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@nprofile…0kf8 These are really good question, and some don't have a right solution.
Selection for example, I _absolutely hate_ when selection changes go to undo. But, I expect the program to restore the undo to the state before the change. Say, delete a section of text, undo should return to the point where the text is selected.
In general my assumption is an undo stack per "document", that is, a thing that you would save for disc.

2026-01-16 10:13:08 UTC

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@nprofile…0kf8 I keep going back to this one: https://maxliani.wordpress.com/2021/09/01/undo-the-art-of-part-1/
I think it goes through all the considerations that are important.
I usually end up building simpler ones where I store before/after (principal) data, and use some callbacks to update the rest.

2026-01-16 09:44:38 UTC

I've been reading up blog posts about undo systems, and quite a few of them have (Part 1) in the title, but there's never Part 2 post. Starting to wonder if that is some kind of insider undo joke.

2026-01-07 08:06:34 UTC

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@nprofile…5x8e My favorite childhood side scroller was to play "motocross" on bank of the road during long road trips. The levels were usually better during winter when the snow smoothed out the geometry.

2025-12-12 13:31:56 UTC

natvis question... I have a global array for string interning purposes (g_names), and I have a natvis that tries to acess that. Works on some sources and not on others. There was some way to make it more specific but my google fails. Any pointers?

2025-12-06 10:55:55 UTC

It might not look much, but it's a COLRv1 OT parser ducttaped on stb_truetype.
You may wonder COLRv1WTF, and that is the saner color font format (another one being embedded SVG) used by emojis.
The point is try to see if I can have option for Skribidi to just depend on kb_ts and stb_tt.
kb text shape: https://github.com/JimmyLefevre/kb
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/672/223/877/471/262/original/e17637902c63cf4c.png

2025-11-30 20:04:21 UTC

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@nprofile…76gq I completely agree. Though, I have build many systems quite recently where we needed components for components too. Rigidbody + many colliders is one example, a Character Movement component + movement mode components is another.
In those cases I think the sub-components should have specific base type, just like in the entity/component relationship.

2025-11-30 19:56:56 UTC

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@nprofile…76gq I 100% agree, on the entity component relationship and the composition.
I think there's a finer point about them all being the same in grand scheme of things that I'm not able explain quite yet :) I hope to show some examples as my tinkering goes forward.

2025-11-30 19:33:25 UTC

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@nprofile…76gq By Node here I mean the base object type that you use to create reflection, and inheritance and all that jazz.
The same way a specific type of node can create great assumptions about what is available before (access other components via parent entity), arrays of specific type of nodes can make it easy to reason about the data that is forward too.

2025-11-30 19:30:43 UTC

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@nprofile…76gq " but I dislike the way you’re forced to represent composition as a hierarchy."
I'm curious what you mean by that.
The model I'm going to try to build the hierarchy is not the same "node" all the way. But you could do this:
struct State : Node {
...
NodeArray<Transition> transitions;
}
struct Transition : Node {
NodeArray<Condition> conditions;
}
So even if they are all nodes, they are not just one soup. Specific types goes to specific containers.

2025-11-30 16:35:10 UTC

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@nprofile…76gq I think the sub-component thing comes more prevalent when you have other types of assets, like a FSM definition might have state->transition->condition, etc.

2025-11-30 15:57:57 UTC

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@nprofile…76gq That is exactly my notes too :) I have 2 additional things:
- the data inheritance is not unique to entity defs, I think all game definition data should be handled that way (including inheritance and composition)
- things should not be limited to entities and components, components should be able to have components too (or entities)
- everything should not be a node (like in godot), but you should be able to define multiple typed arrays of children

2025-11-30 14:40:14 UTC

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@nprofile…76gq I just saw some of your Godot node/component organization discussions from last May, and that is pretty much what I'm tinkering with.
I have a great-unified-theory of all that game data organization, and trying to see if I can tease it out of my head is some form or other :)

2025-11-30 14:30:10 UTC

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@nprofile…76gq I like that name for something that is immutable.
I'm trying to collect my notes on something like entity definition. In my mind that also involves being able to derive new definitions from existing ones (data inheritance), or "instance" definitions into other definitions to compose larger ones (like what is usually called prefabs), or sometimes "reference" other definitions (say a state machine def or list of weapon defs).
(writing out loud to see if those words make sense :))

2025-11-29 19:04:56 UTC

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@nprofile…fnpd Somehow it's even worse than clipart. My hypothesis is that clipart can be bad taste, but they are generally comprehensible. You can quickly parse them as something and ignore.
While AI slop is recursive "something is off...". I think that is why some of the pictures are so captivating too, but in the wrong way (i.e. in presentations).

2025-11-28 10:15:52 UTC

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AFAIK Unity, Figma & co call 1 an instance, and rendering often calls 2 instancing.
So I'm looking for a term that would work well in the first context where the inherited duplicate is called instance.

2025-11-28 10:11:02 UTC

I'm looking for a term for data that is instanced as "immutable".
Background: many tools allow to create reusable components or prefabs from existing data. Unity prefabs, Figma components, etc.
There are two ways to use this data:
1) You can take the prefab and duplicate the whole thing to be part of your data.
2) You can have some overrides (i.e. position, rotation) but treat the prefab as immutable (no duplication)
Is there a common name for pt. 2?

2025-11-21 19:51:02 UTC

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@nprofile…9rel Works now!

2025-11-21 11:14:08 UTC

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@nprofile…9rel I have intel gpu, based on the issue it kinda smelled like it could be drvier specific too.

2025-11-21 11:13:05 UTC

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@nprofile…9rel I went with Fedora KDE

2025-11-20 17:38:32 UTC

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@nprofile…9rel if you need someone to test it, let me know.

2025-11-20 17:31:43 UTC

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@nprofile…9rel I changed NULL to X11 and it works now. Thanks!

2025-11-20 14:14:08 UTC

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@nprofile…9rel In handleEvents(), the if (fds[DISPLAY_FD].revents & POLLIN) is executed constantly. I dont know how to check what kind of event it gets.

2025-11-20 13:27:21 UTC

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@nprofile…9rel glfwGetPlatform() returns wayland.

2025-11-20 13:23:08 UTC

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@nprofile…9rel The debugger goes into wl_window.c so I suspect it's wayland.
Do you know if there's a way to dump the events?

2025-11-20 13:11:13 UTC

I wonder if anyone has experience why glfwWaitEventsTimeout(1.0) acts like poll on linux? One windows it goes 1fps unless theres mouse/keyb movement.

2025-11-19 17:39:14 UTC

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@nprofile…e330 Sounds like I'll try the non-atomic version then. Thanks for the RPM fusion tip!

2025-11-19 15:11:15 UTC

Got myself a refurbished PC laptop, let the Linux experiment begin. I'm going to try Fedora Kinoite. Fedora because I want to use CLion, something KDE based because some comments earlier that "anything but gnome". Let's see.

2025-11-03 10:12:26 UTC

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@nprofile…fnpd Thanks for reporting! :) FWIW I tried to hop into the SourceGit train too, but something felt off. I eventually settled on CLions/Riders internal git.

2025-11-01 20:36:22 UTC

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@nprofile…e330 Nice! I've been looking for something super simple, and potentially useful for skribidi example.
Mostly to test that there are enough hooks to bolt syntax highlight in (or spell checker, or what not), but also to maybe have something simple enough that could be useful.
I'm surprised how well e.g. lolight works, even if it does not have per lang rules. I'm sure it has a breaking point, though.
Yet to play with these, but curious to see what is the minimum useful syntax highlighting.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/476/341/457/420/177/original/d20faf19737bfae5.png

2025-11-01 16:25:07 UTC

I have been researching for syntax highlighters, and I'm really fascinated by some minimal ones, like lolight or microlight.
https://github.com/lrsjng/lolight
https://github.com/asvd/microlight
I do enjoy o good syntax highlighter, but also curious how little would me enough.
Also, @nprofile…8z3d 's ginkgo takes syntax tricks to a whole new level :)
https://github.com/plinkysynth/ginkgo

2025-10-27 07:25:49 UTC

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@nprofile…e330 For a moment I got very confused, as I moved my mouse across and back the image, and it happened to match very closely to the recorded movement :D

2025-10-24 21:32:36 UTC

I have been working recently to get the last bits of rich text editing in place.
Mostly special handling of tab, enter, and backspace for indentation handling.
Things like, setting text body style after pressing enter at the end of the header. Or how backspace outdents and finally removes a list style altogether.
Again a lot of details we take for granted.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/431/261/615/983/614/original/e6b83867f47ae3a4.mp4

2025-10-14 20:13:14 UTC

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@nprofile…fnpd Will do, Jepulis!

2025-10-14 18:30:09 UTC

So nice to finally get to the actual rich text editing, not just the stuff that enables it. Still ways to go, but baby steps.
There's a lot of rich text editing tricks to discover, like that when you press enter after a header, you will automatically get body text style.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/373/931/635/611/461/original/47cb55ea50e72c26.mp4

2025-10-09 09:29:05 UTC

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@nprofile…nua9 @nprofile…t3wn @nprofile…jf4m +1 to Geogram, Manifold seems to be used quite a bit too (e.g. Blender), but last time I checked it had some robustness issues.

2025-10-08 06:17:57 UTC

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@nprofile…t3wn I think this is something I would like to understand too.
I find it super hard to work in linear when making 2D content, super annoying when the content works different based on surrounding color.
Trying to select a linear color by numbers is frustrating (though, you could use a function). I think gradients can be treated as separate problem too. But what if your gradient has alpha an everything looks like crap again?

2025-10-07 12:15:13 UTC

This alpha blending article made rounds today, I like it!
https://blog.pkh.me/p/43-the-current-technology-is-not-ready-for-proper-blending.html
But... it kinds bails out when it comes to solve the hard stuff, that is, how to blend shapes to buffer.
Are there any articles that try to even propose a solution that? What would a practical oklab pipeline look like?
Let's prune that down to render an UI, which is overlaid on a game viewport.

2025-06-19 20:55:33 UTC

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@nprofile…gvnm Really cool, thanks for sharing!

2025-06-10 21:04:04 UTC

I have been researching and working on a text stack good part of this spring.
It is called Skribidi, and it can do bidirectional text layout, rendering and editing.
It has fairly lean dependencies and is MIT licensed.
https://github.com/memononen/Skribidi
It kinda started as a self help project trying to deal with weltschmerz and burnout. I needed something the felt even mildly meaningful and complex enough that I could hyper focus on details.
Any feedback welcome!

2025-05-20 15:35:22 UTC

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@nprofile…gvnm Heh! I remember that resonated with me too 30yrs ago when I started writing demos :D And congrats!

2025-05-20 13:18:23 UTC

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@nprofile…gvnm What will you be when you grow up?

2024-12-21 01:16:22 UTC

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@nprofile…jvvf That makes sense. I had another look at the nanovg out-of-atlas case and looks like it just creates a bigger atlas (doubles the shorter side), but keeps the current atlas around until the end of the frame, so no need to patch any data.
https://github.com/memononen/nanovg/blob/master/src/nanovg.c#L2418
I've experimented with some quite elaborate resizing/defragging in the past, but the complex ones always got out of hand. I think the most useful one was a version that kept the rasterized data around, but would do full relayout.

2024-12-20 23:58:38 UTC

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@nprofile…jvvf Nice! curious about the details. Are you rasterizing the glyphs as needed? I did that with font stash and nanovg.
I ran into bunch of issues with chinese and different sizes, and atlas running out of space mid frame.
My solution was to create new larger atlas mid frame, and consolidate at the end of the frame.