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[[{“value”:”If you’ve ever been frustrated by setting breakpoints just to check a variable while your game is running — Dear ImGui is the answer. In this episode, Andy and Stacey walk through what Dear ImGui is, how to drop it into your .NET game project, and how to build debug tooling that runs inside your game. Dear ImGui is perfect for game developers working in C# and .NET frameworks (MonoGame, Unity, Godot, custom engines) who want faster debugging and in-game editor tooling — without pulling in a full UI framework.
🚀 What You’ll Learn
• What Dear ImGui is and why immediate mode UI is a great fit for game tooling.
• How to get the .NET bindings (ImGui.NET, Hexa.NET.ImGui) and a renderer for your engine.
• How to display live game state without stopping execution.
• How to build in-game editors: move sprites, change shading, pause simulations.
• How ImGui is used beyond game dev (ImHex hex editor demo).
⏱️Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:30 The challenge of debugging games
1:33 What is a debug layer?
2:04 Introducing Dear ImGui
4:37 Language bindings and .NET packages
7:01 Demo: ImGui in MonoGame
7:36 Widget tour — buttons, inputs, sliders, color pickers
10:49 How ImGui UI code works
12:59 Immediate mode vs retained mode
17:31 Demo: Binding data to the UI
20:06 Drag and drop
22:22 Demo: Sprite editor with list boxes
25:14 Demo: Ant farm game
26:37 Debug layer in action — pause, step, draw walls
32:57 ImHex: A hex editor built with ImGui
35:01 Wrap-up
🔗 Links & Resources
Dear ImGui (official repo): https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
Hexa.NET.ImGui bindings: https://github.com/HexaEngine/Hexa.NET.ImGui
ImGui.NET bindings: https://github.com/ImGuiNET/ImGui.NET
MonoGame: https://monogame.net
📺 Watch the full series: https://aka.ms/Quest-to-Compile
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