Reddit Game Jam

I just heard about the Reddit Game Jam. This is a 48 hour period to write a game for a theme that is chosen at the start of the contest. It is sort of like a 2DRL with a lot more rules. In the end they use Reddit votes to determine who has the best game.

You cannot steal images for your game. They want you to make it cross platform. You cannot use any commercial libraries. If you use some personal libraries, you have to supply the source code to everyone.

Your game has to run on minimal hardware. When you are done, you must share all of your source code. That does not mean that you have to open source your code. But you must post it all out there. You get one extra day to package your code. This all sounds like a fun idea. Maybe I can unleash some kind of roguelike on them. It might be tough to get it all done in 48 hours though.

Writing in Elvish

I just found out that it is not that hard to learn how to write in Elvish. Now there are many ways to translate English to Elvish. However one easy way is to use a mapping between the English and Elven alphabet. You combine this with some simple rules regarding the placement of vowels. The result is one simple way to do the translation.

Previously I imagined the written Elven language to be complex, like the Klingon language from Star Trek. However this need not be the case. If you want to learn how to write Elvish yourself, go check out Ned Gulley's tutorial on this. You will be glad you did.