Dan Herbert

It's a bit early for #ScreenshotSaturday, but this image marks a successful (and unexpected) detour for my game UIs. Might write an article... Short version: ImGui windows now render to an atlas & sprites present them. All the standard sprite fun, and fully interactive too!

Nostalgic for late 90s internet - riding my bike to the library, repeat booking 20 minute sessions on the computers to find Duke3d maps or research school assignments... Without a doubt the 'net is more practical now, but I do think it was better back then.

AAA quality right here.

The last few days I've been building out the core state machine for this game. Fantastic structure for projects that are sequential or state based, such as card games, board games, turn based games, etc.

Big enough? #gamdev

Going deep on sci-fi horror themes for inspiration on a #gamedev concept. Alien (1st movie), Pandorum, Blade Runner, Altered Carbon are the sort of vibe. Any suggestions?

Had a great idea for a card game this morning. A couple mechanical inspirations, but overall fairly unique (I think?). A bit of push your luck, a bit of exploration, simple battle encounters... Could potentially be great as a video game or a physical game.

Some notes on `@container style()` - danherbert.io/blog/2026013...

I'd love to see more posts/content on perf optimisation, rendering, and novel approaches to technical problems - deeper topics focused on learning and exploring. Feels impossible to escape discourse about US politics or AI these days.

New post: danherbert.io/blog/2026012... Tried Claude Code Pro for a week. It impressed me more than I expected, but ultimately didn't change much for me.

2026 refresh danherbert.io 💅 Clean, lean, and minimal.

A lesson learned in the last year of building: most people don't pay for "time saved". The ones who do are rare, and not at all like the average user.

Closing out the year with v1.1.2 of Elide for Laravel (a HTMX package). 1.1.1 + 1.1.2 include a small QoL facade function and a minor fix. github.com/danherbert-i...

Taking a break from normal dev work for some pre-Christmas gamedev. Super preliminary loadout screen and progress screens well underway, along with the data and internal systems to support those. Specs/modifiers are all defined through editable files which may open the door to some basic mods.

Few updates atm, holiday season got things a bit all over the shop. Nevertheless, happy with what's going on. Gamdev: Honing in on a pretty tight+cohesive vibe. If it proves unfun, lots I can reuse elsewhere Elide: Starter kit coming along nicely Xero PO importer: almost ready

IntelliJ IDE's creating nested paths when you type "/" as part of a folder name was always one of my favourite QOL features. Really pleased to discover it's present in KDE too!

Just over 3 weeks since installing Kubuntu. Aside from web dev which remains on the MacBook Air, this has become the daily driver. Booted into Windows 11 only once to check something. Haven't missed it _at all_.

Every now and then I ponder if I should become a "cleanup guy" for projects. Refactoring and cleaning things up gives me oh so much joy...

Lots of things on the go, really happy with today's work - game dev, starter kit, Xero. Hopefully some time to get some screenshots and posts up in the next week or so

Crazy idea while out driving today - Dear ImGui as a layout engine, widgets represented with entities & components, allowing for effect/rotation and other things not typically possible with Dear ImGui. Quick experiment proved viability, stoked! Blog post later this week perhaps.

Got Dear ImGui windows rendering within the context of a scene with MonoGame+Nez today. Big step toward using ImGui for in-game controls and having it feel more grounded with scene effects and rendering, rather than a debug UI layer over the top.

Super crude gamedev demo - MIDI files now spec which clips to play, loop/jump points, and other events/data for the game. The game can now interact to musically timed events, and work with loop/jump points to change tension levels with transition periods. Really happy w this!

Fun gamedev today. The music system I built wasn't proving enough reactivity between music and gameplay/ui/aesthetics. Today moved to a system which uses MIDI files - notes => music clips, events & CC data define loops and game events/effects. Clips soon, works really well!

Also started on some UI bits for my game. I have a good idea of how I want it to be, but it's easy to get lost in the details and choices!

Started the second Elide Starter Kit for Laravel today. It'll include a few more things than the current simple starter kit. I'll be making it look close to the official starter kits too, for consistency.

At a venue waiting for my missus for a gig (Tool!), and it feels pretty unusual to me that it's late November, it's pouring down, and I'm in jeans and wishing I had worn more layers. What the heck...

Laravel's ecosystem really spoils us... Added subscription/billing management to a project, from zero to done, in about 15 minutes with Laravel Cashier (Stripe) this afternoon. Plan selection UI, billing management, web hooks - the lot. ❤️

Little bit of gamedev today - started work on the `DynamicSong` system. Each "Song" has 1+ loops defined for levels of tension, + transition loops between the tension levels. Tension increases as players progress the waves. Feed Me is placeholder only- I'll do all the music :)

PHP 8.5 is out! Elide's tests are all passing, but that MySQL deprecation (coming from the framework) is triggering some minor OCD feelings. Good to know there are no changes required for the package though!

PHP enums are great for consolidating state related behaviour/comparisons you might use many times throughout a project. Simplifies inclusion of new states into existing behaviour too.

Another day, another Elide release: github.com/danherbert-i... Includes new functionality to help remove unnecessary content from HTMX responses - handy to help squash and manage OOB "no target" errors.

I stopped waiting for HL3 years ago, though their HL games do seem to usually coincide with hardware/software advancements... If it ever made sense for Valve to ship a new main entry to the Half Life series, it'd be soon after announcing/releasing 3 new hardware devices of their own.

Also pushed up a small maintenance update for Elide (Laravel+HTMX) today: github.com/danherbert-i...

Recently moved to Linux (Kubuntu) - wrote a quick post about the motivation, installation, and impressions: danherbert.io/blog/2025111...

This (always) sparks joy.

Working on a dynamic music system for this little game. There are different "layers" of music which play based on a current "tension" level. The idea is that each stage is a series of waves, and as you progress through the waves the tension increases. Should be good for juice.

I really like my MacBook and Apple's M chips, but holey moley this PC running Kubuntu is _fast_. All my dev tools and software, and games, seem so much faster and feel "just ready to go let's go let's go". Might become my daily driver for working/playing at home at this rate.