Jan 26 Updates

What’s up y’all! It’s another week here on Earth. No need to check the news! Things here on Earth are good. Yes very good.

We’re not quite in Super McLepke Mode yet, but the momentum is building toward that. Heading into the week of Jan 26, I’ve worked on game dev for 21 straight days. The streak is real. The last coding update from last week was this one, showing that we’ve got a working inventory system in place, as well as a few variations on what a textbox dialogue might look like.

Once our main character is in range of something that can be investigated, the purple ! will appear over their head. If you then press up, you will investigate. In the first case, Robbie reads the sign. In the second case, Robbie talks to the ballet dancer, complete with differing text sounds, and dialogue portraits. In the third case, opening the gift box adds an apple into Robbie’s inventory, and you can see that the inventory actually does get updated with the apple.

In addition, all of our text is ready to translate. Even values like “Ballet Dancer” in the conversational textbox or the “Apple” in the giftbox are being dynamically translated from a key into English while the game is running.

I also worked on building out the 2d version of Friendship, the main town in the game. Here’s an in-progress screen.

The floating person is just there for scale - it’s the size a person (e.g., the main character) will be on this screen. I mentioned this last week, but I’m starting to experiment with different levels of zoom on different screens. In the screen above, what you’re looking at would be the entire screen. The camera won’t move at all on this screen. I’m picturing each house be enter-able, while the two building with the signs on them will be shops. The people in the houses will have quests for you to complete. There’s also ladders leading up to a second layer of the screen, but nothing has been built up there yet.

One change I have noticed in my pixel art lately compared to years past is it’s getting flatter. In the past, I made an effort to include shading on everything I did. So if I made a red house, there would be 3 or more commonly 5 shades of red that would form a gradient across the house. It makes it seem like the sun is somewhere in the universe, and casting shadows.

Over time I’ve been getting away from that and favoring single-color flatter pixel art. While it’s very simple, it has a cartoon-like feel to it. It’s kind of like, yes, I could make the pixel art look more realistic by adding more shading, but do I even want it to be realistic? Not really. I want it to look more like a cartoon. Combine this with the fact that single-color blocks are easier to draw, and here we are.

Speaking of pixel art, the cover photo of this week’s post was my latest emote on Twitch, and I quite love it.

For those not familiar with the Mega Man series of video games, this is a reference to the little space ship Dr. Wily (the main antagonist of Mega Man) flies at some point in every game. So this isn’t something that will appear in the game I’m making, this is an emote you can use on Twitch if you’re a subscriber to my channel, mclepke.

And you might want to subscribe, because this week should mark the long-awaited return of mclepke the speedrunner. If it’s not this week, it will certainly be next week, but I think this week is more likely. I’m in the process of putting the finishing touches on the Mega Man 4 run before going live with it.

My last stream was September 4th, but even that was just a one-off stream of Ducktales 2. My last stream that was part of a real mclepke grind for greatness was August 26th - the day I got the new Felix the Cat Low% world record.

Hopefully no gaps as long as that will appear at any point in 2026. This year I want to keep my mission closer to the top of my mind. We’re not here to make friends or draw a large audience or make a lot of subscriber revenue. We’re here to beat your time. We’re here so that when you see the name mclepke on the leaderboards, you know that if you want to beat that time, you’re going to have to give it everything you’ve got.

Speaking of being needlessly competitive and cutthroat, I was talking to my therapist Nora about the never-ending yo-yo that is my weight in our last session. Her take on things was interesting to me. Robbie, she said, while you grew to have a strong distaste of overly competitive environments while at Wharton and in business, the truth is, you’re a lot more competitive than you want to believe you are. You should see if you can bring some healthy competitive energy to your goals around your own weight.

I don’t actually know what that looks like in practice yet, but I did think it was insightful.

So, while game dev is on a 21 day streak of success and speedrunning is on an 11 day streak of success, diet is now on a 1 day streak of success. Success is now eating no processed food, and eating under 1600 calories a day. Let’s get competitive with it.

PS: Erika did make this trifle over the weekend. You know on the Great British Bake Off when they do ‘dessert’ week and you’re like wait I thought these were all desserts and then they make things like trifles which is just a bunch of stuff in a bowl? Yeah, that’s what this was. I will trifle responsibly though, don’t worry.

That’s it for today - I’ll be back during the week to update this post with some of the smaller daily goings-on. I hope you have a great week everyone. You can do it. Avoid the news. I believe in you. Good luck and don’t fuck it up.

Monday Update

I had an idea with the diet and exercise goals that are always swirling around this blog.

So game dev is taking off now that I am in this mode where I have a streak. The streak is streaking. I’m doing well with that. My speedrunning comeback is also benefiting from the streak. I do well with no days off.

Now, we’ve seen in the past that I also do well with a no-days-off approach to exercise. Unfortunately, I also have a track record with sustaining injuries while working out without taking days off. This eventually led to me simply walking for exercise. Walking is great, but even that is difficult to do daily because of how cold it is in Pittsburgh. We have over a foot of snow right now. I often like to think that I can walk outside every day regardless of the weather, but in practice I can’t.

SO, I decided to get a walking pad for my apartment. This idea makes so much sense now that I’ve thought of it that I’m surprised it has taken me this long to implement. I think in part it took a long time because I think of myself as being much more capable of exercise than someone who merely walks. Now that I’m in my late 30’s it’s probably smarter to lean into my new life as a walker, though.

So the diet and exercise streak will now track not eating processed food, eating under 1600 calories per day, and walking 5.0 miles per day. The streak is 1, and should be 2 by the end of today. Walking pad era!

Tuesday Update

23 days of game dev, 13 of speedrunning, 3 of diet and walking. I’ve also been paying attention to my weight for long enough to have our first seven day average weight of 2026- 233.3 Write that number down because I can feel it in my bones that we will only be going down from here. Super McLepke Mode is active. Have a great day everyone. You can do it. Try to use my momentum to propel yourself forward as well. Also look at these bookcases I made today.

Also I finished Metroid Prime 4 yesterday. I’m happy I played it, but I give it a 5/10 on the unofficial McLepke rating scale. For my next casual game I’m finally going to play a Larian game - I never have. I’m jumping right into the newest one with Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m excited to try it since it’s so universally loved. Erika bought the game for the Playstation since her best friend really likes it, but I think we’ve discovered that Erika and her best friend do not have the same taste in video games. That means I already own it though, so that’s cool.

Wednesday Updates

The streaks are at 24-14-4. Weight (7-day) started at 233.3, now at 232.4 (-0.9). Go go go.

I added another Mega Man 4 themed emote on Twitch. I’m out of animated slots, so this one had to be a still image. It’s the mechanical moth boss. The twitch crew I hang out with has a recurring moth joke whose origin is the moth boss in Zelda 3, which is why this emote spoke to me.

I also started working on the circus tent that will appear in Friendship. In last week’s post I showed the NPC who will be running the citrus circus, this is the first draft of her tent.

For today’s speedrunning practice I’ll be attempting a full run through Mega Man 4, though still offline. The time to go live is coming, but I need to keep at it a little longer. Stay tuned.

Have a great day everyone!

Friday Update

It was a year ago today that I jacked up my eye and had to go to the ER. Remember that?

The dog I was heroically saving when I ran down the icy driveway and slipped sadly passed away around two months ago. I forget her name, but I’ll have this scar on my eye the rest of my life to remember her bye. No regrets. RIP neighbor yellow lab.

Also I’m planning on streaming today for the first time in ~5 months. A rule that I have always envisioned: on stream days you do NOT have to do game dev. The streak will extend automatically. Streaming is a whole production, so I think this is a very fair rule and not just me making excuses.

The streaks sit at 26 - 16 - 6. Stop by my stream later today and check out how Mega Man 4 is looking! Have a great day!

Post Stream Update

Okay I’m officially back!

My first stream back was great. I ended day 1 of Mega Man 4 with a 41:37, good for #97 on the leaderboards. We’re in the top 100!

If you’d like to see the first PB, here it is. Hopefully there will be several more to come. I have a weird face in the video preview but idk how to change that lol. Enjoy!

PS: Podo says to make sure to stay warm