Finished mine with 15mins left on the clock. Spent too much time outside this weekend with great weather for a change but I am overall happy with how it turned out. Planned on having a lot better level and upgrade structure and a better boss fight but I had a lot of fun making it.

Check it out

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=65596

Making of Stranded on Planet Shiftos (timelapse video)

LD34 happen to come on a weekend I had no plans and I ended up making a game with my 5 year old over a few hours for the most part (http://www.kongregate.com/games/8bitthirsty/a-knight-in-a-cave-ludum-dare-34-jam). I had a lot of fun but didn't really participate too seriously with my submission and it was really cool checking out what everyone else made. Cleared my schedule a bit more for this one so I am hopeful my game will turn out well.

I have done quite a few other game jams and I do highly recommend them. They have all been fun for me and I don't get burned out working on a game when you have such a short timeline and you know people playing aren't expecting perfection. The only thing I was a little bummed about with LD34 is that I didn't get many plays on my game or much feedback but I didn't put much effort into promoting my game outside a quick tweet/facebook post/C2 forum post and there are tons of entries so that is an area I really hope to do better with.

I would suggest everyone remotely interested go into it with an open mind and come up with an idea and run with it. Don't worry about polish and don't stress too much over the parts of game development you aren't as into. If a game doesn't have good or any sound or polished animations its not a big of a deal.

I am in for this too! Will be my 2nd ludum dare but last time I did it with my son and just threw something together in a few hours. Interested to see what everyone will come up with especially the other C2 devs.

I think it all depends on the art and game play involved. Games like Nuclear Throne and Binding of Issac don't even really have 4 directions they fully animate in but they still look great IMO. Play around with it and see what works best for you.

I made this game in an hour for the weekly hour long game jam http://onehourgamejam.com/

Play the game in the arcade https://www.scirra.com/arcade/action-games/bitmen-attack-of-the-toasters-6787

Watch the making of

Watch the playing of the games mine starts at 4:45 https://www.twitch.tv/bitslap/v/59610584

Let me know what you think... I was pretty happy with how it turned out especially once we got the theme Toaster Madness and this was my first attempt at a game in an hour. Made 100% in construct could have been done with the free version even.

Here it's this https://www.scirra.com/arcade/adventure-games/super-mario-bros-6715

I agree, compared to other Atari titles it wasn't really that bad especially considering the unheard of 5 week time frame he had to work on it. I did play it a bit before remaking the game and there were some very obnoxious bugs like falling into a pit over and over the second you got out of one but it was the incredibly over-hyped and rushed production schedule that made this game so famously bad.

Anyone interested should check out this article http://www.polygon.com/2014/6/3/5775026/e-t-myth-worst-game-ever

If you are trying to compare the two I would say they each have their place along with their own set of pros and cons. Either way I would try out the free version of both and see which you like more. I believe Game Maker is more robust and has had more general success with the popular indie games made with it but I much prefer Construct 2. Construct 2 has its limitations but once you learn it there isn't much I can think to do in a 2d game that I cannot do in Construct and most importantly I think working with C2 is just plain fun.

There are many different ways of doing enemy AI but the simple and effect way I handle AI is giving each of your sprites an AI instance variable and set their behaviors to coincide different values.

Enemy AI=0 the enemy does nothing

Enemy AI=1 move up

Enemy AI=2 move down

Enemy AI=3 move towards the player and attack every random(1,3) seconds

Then set the variable based on time or distance or collisions. So if the enemy does not have line of sight to the player every 3 seconds switch between 1 and 2 then if the enemy gets line of sight set the variable to 3. You could also do this by creating invisible checkpoints and mapping out paths for them to walk changing their AI variable based on which checkpoint they collide with. It can get very complex but that is my quick explanation on how I do it.

I remade the classically awful E.T. for #redoretro game jam over the weekend. I had fun putting it together and finding ways to make it broken on purpose in minor ways to keep the jankey feel of the original.

https://www.scirra.com/arcade/action-games/bt-the-bit-terrestrial-6648

I made a Bernie game a few months back and had been thinking about doing something similar.. http://www.kongregate.com/games/8bitThirsty/feel-the-bern

I was going to do more of a Trump loses but starts a civil war sort of game but that's about as far as I got before realizing to do it right I would need to have much better art skills or a dedicated artist.

Really, do you mean I can't use even on native window games?

More or less yea. There are some workarounds and hopefully some software updates in the future but you configure all the buttons within steam big picture mode so most games won't recognize the controller as a controller unless you launch them through steam big picture mode. I absolutely love the controller when I can use it though.