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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

A small selection of photos from Brazil...

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.

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.

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

Wk 3 in Brazil- similar to my previous trip to EU, websites with heavy frontends are a major pain to use with slow/spotty internet. The bar of "minimum reasonable user experience" is pretty low, yet it gets missed so often. Good UI signals and fewer dependencies go a long way!

Gutted to be missing Laracon AU this year. Looking to be great!

On Sundays, Avenida Paulista in São Paulo is closed to traffic - food/craft stalls fill the streets, bands play music, and McDonald's has a street facing DJ booth pumping out the beats while people dance in the street.

Been brainstorming a set of virtual/digital themed resources which might be (loosely) comparable to resources from a game like Settlers. Eg, instead of "mine for gold ore" it might be "generate cycles" or "compress data". Challenging to come up with options which don't sound cliche or crappy 😂

Couldn't live without my notebooks+nice pen... Never go anywhere without it, esp when away from home. Time to kill & can't stop thinking about gamedev? Doodles/notes/planning. Wake up with a solve to a bug? Get it off brain and back to sleep. New SaaS feature? Noted. Journal/pondering? Done.

On holiday in my partner's home country (Brazil), trying very hard to disconnect from game/SaaS dev. Brain just won't let go - I think I've finally honed in on a core game loop that might be fun. Lots of notes and sketches to iterate on when back home. Send help 😂

Bit of a sensational title, but this is a solid video. youtu.be/CoGO6s7bS3A?...

For anyone with `GameObject[]` in their #Unity inspectors and getting "GetName" errors + broken, change the editor font. No joke - getting back into #gamedev and been frustrated by this for a couple weeks. Shocked that just changing the font fixed it. Credit: discussions.unity.com/t/please-tel...

Selling my 2x tickets to Good Things Festival in Melb in Dec - tixel.com/u/3366417 Tool, Weezer, Garbage, Refused, many more great bands in the lineup.

Been under the weather the last couple days, haven't been able to work. So much thinking and planning while idle though. Have a core game loop and progression in mind (hybrid genres), and a direction for aesthetics. Remains to be seen if these are "sick (good) ideas" or "sick (not good) ideas".

One of the dev things I enjoy the most (esp in gamedev) is the transition from extremely rough prototype to actual build. Been working on a headless simulation framework the last couple weeks (w a Unity frontend), and formalising/cleaning that up has been oh so satisfying.

Laravel's LazyCollections + PHP's first class callables and generators is **chefs kiss**

Recently I've been prototyping #gamedev mechanics for something akin to Settlers 2. For years I've wanted to create a minimal/zen settlers game, but I'm curious what sort of theme players might be interested in... Brutally minimal - shapes and chill sounds? Cartoon? Hand drawn?

Yesterday I released a very minimal starter kit for Laravel + my Elide/HTMX package. It scaffolds a simple and lean project which is close to no build and has a dynamic front-end. github.com/danherbert-i...

First day back on the bar in 10+ years. Didn't realise how much I missed it...

Just released v1.0.9 of Elide, my package for #Laravel + #HTMX. github.com/danherbert-i... Small addition - can now specify callback(s) to filter partials returned to the frontend.

Why does *everything* have to have AI or AI related stuff bundled in? Where are the opt in/out options so folks can choose?

New blog post: "I tried AI coding - I still don't get it..." Gave "full AI coding" a solid go. I was disappointed (again). danherbert.io/blog/2025081...

Hold on tight... last night's @phpxadl.bsky.social talk is ready for you. Starting with a clean @statamic.com install and a site design in Figma, I put 40 minutes on the clock to see how much of a maintainable site we can build live. youtu.be/iFNRqy1xuZk

`display: contents` is my new favourite CSS thing. So very handy.

New post: The importance of dogfooding. It's really valuable process which should be employed as much as possible. danherbert.io/blog/2025073...

Rebuilt my personal site using a Laravel package I recently released: Elide - a helper that makes Laravel + HTMX feel a bit like Inertia. No JS, no build step. Just components and partials. 📝 danherbert.io/blog/2025072... 📦 Elide: github.com/danherbert-i... #Laravel #HTMX #PHP

youtu.be/t-hsfvafzdo?... Frisson every time with this one. The last half is especially 👌

Interesting cache issue today (`Vary` header w CloudFlare). Figured I'd try my monthly "what does AI suggest?" Gave up after 2 hours w no solve and suggestions like "duplicate all your routes to serve the req'd responses". The fix was about 5 lines of handwritten js. Know your tools.

Media controls with Google Maps Navigation are officially gone now - all I wanted is a "skip track" button. So in the spirit of "you can just do things", I made a skip track button which can be dragged anywhere on the screen. Problem solved in about 30 minutes.

To get good at something you have to do that thing over and over - practice! That takes time. Paradoxically, you should also put time towards trying new things often so that you can work out what you should be practicing. Things change!

Currently out of action due to a back injury, but the brain won't stop - so much code marinating. Going to be a deluge of commits once I can get back to my desk. Got a Laravel package I'm keen to get out as part of that.

*feels good meme*

My little Laravel Pennant PR got merged 🎉

Gone a bit mad scientist the last couple days - had an idea for a game on my mind for a long time, might just be able to execute it with @nativephp.com. So much fun to experiment with novel things in ways they probably weren't intended to be used.