iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

A spot of ImGui work in my fork of Nez this morning: - Now supports multiple atlased window renderers - Improved per-renderder ImGui theme setup - Enabled docking in Nez's main ImGui UI #gamedev

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

People have been discovering and honing in on UI/UX patterns for a very long time now. We should be refining and supercharging those patterns rather than making everything a chat interface.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Haven't had the brain for progressing game mechanics this week. Instead made some big pushes towards the aesthetics I'm aiming for, fog of war with map hints, big revamp of UI systems, post processing, and more... #ScreenshotSaturday

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

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!

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

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.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

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.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

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?

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

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.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

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.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

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.

danherbert.io

Dan Herbert

Development and production relating to: web, games, and music

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Updated my #gamedev project to render Dear ImGui windows directly into textures which are then displayed via sprites (input is translated+mapped accordingly too). Now I can tint/rotate/skew/scale/more ImGui UIs to make them fit into the vibe I want way more easily.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

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

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

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.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

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.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

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

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Given time + component evolution I almost always find myself wondering why I didn't just write CSS in the first place. This button for example: - size+status -> BEM modifiers - the status colours could be a system reused wherever required - conditional appearance offloaded to client rendering

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

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!

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

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_.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

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...

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

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

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

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.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

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.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

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!

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

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!

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

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!

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

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.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

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...

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

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. ❤️

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

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 :)

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

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!

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

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.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

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.

github.com

Release v1.1.0 · danherbert-io/elide-for-laravel

Responses can now omit partials which have been rendered within other partials via the omitRenderedChildPartials() method. Check documentation for the details.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

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.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

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

danherbert.io

Dan Herbert

Development and production relating to: web, games, and music

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

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.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

Extremely rough #gamedev clip. Doesn't look like much, but it's nice to see systems coming together. All movement (player+enemy speed/accel/decel), weapon firing+spread+cool down, and enemy sequencing is driven by a "power allocation" system. Most things will be based on this.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

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.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

Squeezing in an SSD today. GPU is about as big as everything else combined. A bit tricky for a case this size... 🤦‍♂️

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

Trying Linux as an alternative to Win11 for gaming and gamedev, running off a USB drive for now. Only had 1 USB drive so installing required a bit of legwork, but amazed at how well it worked. Kubuntu live ISO VirtualBox > install onto USB drive plugged into host > reboot host off of USB drive.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

Today I worked on a "spec sequencer". The game will proc gen a set of specifications for the player/enemies, some of which are sequenced & timed. This determines movement, difficulty, weapons & attack timings. The sequencer enacts/processes the specs. Cool to see mechanics start to come together.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

A small selection of photos from Brazil...

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

Back in Aus after 3 weeks in Brazil. 48 hours commute + ~17 hour time zone jump got me feeling like the melting emoji Gamedev/SaaS itch is super high, really happy to get back on it.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

11 pages of game dev notes/design on this holiday so far. Avoided this and work thinking at first, until the brain got too itchy (aka bored). Pretty set to get cracking as soon as I get back home.

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Dan Herbert @danherbert.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

Game design doc and sketches after a few days stewing on an idea. Gotta have juice!

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