Highway to Heal News

Hi everyone!

We have started a weekly development log. Every week, we will post on our progress on making City Ambulance: Rescue Express, focusing on specific subjects of the game that have noticeably progressed.

The first post is on the game's hub, follow it to not miss any!

Weekly DevLog #1 - Vehicle AI & Environment Graphics

Have a nice week-end!

Hi everyone!

We are starting a weekly development log so you can all follow our progress on the game. Well, we'll try to do this weekly. Let us know if you like it, if you want it more often, less often, we'll happily ear your feedback on this!

This week, there has been quite some progression on the artificial intelligence of vehicles and the graphics of the residential area, so we'll focus on that.

[h2]A ballet of Vehicles[/h2]

Vehicle artificial intelligence is the work of having cars automatically moving around in the city nicely, kind of a ballet! It's actually a pretty hard job. It's the kind of thing that when done right, no-one notices it's in there. So far, ours cars where super dumb, they would cut across intersections, they would drive at their maximum speed all the time... It meant for quite funny interactions but it was also super frustrating at times.



Daniel spent the whole week on this and now they know how to stop before obstacles presenting in front of them and how to turn in a nice arc to go from one street to another, without cutting across. It's not perfect yet, sometimes they can block themselves together, but it's already a whole lot better. You'll be a lot less surprised by their silliness! This is something we're definitely going to spend more time on in the future.

[h2]Environment's visuals[/h2]

Tom spent a good deal of his weak working on the level design of the residential area. This is an area of the game where streets are quite narrow and cars drive slowly in. Even more than the rest of the city, it's super green thanks to thousands of trees planted by their citizens.


Le Mascaret being inspired by french towns, it's not just straight streets crossing each other nicely. It's all messy and fun to drive in. It's also many streets which are just for people to walk in, no cars, not even ambulances in there!


[h2]Coming up next[/h2]

Right now the game features only one caring mini-game, a spiky injection. We plan on adding two more and re-working the one we have to use a more futuristic pressure injection system. No more being afraid of needles in Le Mascaret!

Stay tuned for more and remember to take care of people around you!

Dear Steam Players,

It's with great joy that I'm writing to you. Something we truly didn't expect actually happened! Last week, Thomas and I, Daniel, went to Angoulême to defend our game amongst great other indie games in La Game Cup, the French Indie Game Competition. You might have voted for us online back in July, but the competition didn't end there.



It was a tense but still fun afternoon of preparation, making videos for social networks, getting interviewed by major french streamers before the event, etc. A bit before 7pm, we went on stage to talk about our game for the only four minutes we were allowed to. That's not much to defend a project! The whole thing was streamed on Twitch and Facebook. People could then vote by text message.

It's with great surprise that an hour later, we got a silver trophy in our hands!



First Places were awared to Lost In Cairo and Versus in the Dark. Check them out, they're very cool! And the other finalists of the newbie and boss categories too!

[h2]What does that mean for us now?[/h2]

This prize awards us several things.

First, courtesy of La Banque Postale, we will be able to start a crowdfunding campaign on KissKissBankBank with a 5000€ start! If you'd like to support our project before its release, stay tuned as this campaign will probably start in a few months.

Second, we will have a 30 day access to labs at CNAM-ENJMIN. We will make sure to use the QA room to give you a nice bug free and completely enjoyable experience!



Lastly, and I think the most important : we will have an ad campaign in french paper magazine "Jeux Vidéo Magazine". Communication around a video game is hard, very hard. It totally makes the difference between a video game studio working hard for years and getting nothing upon release versus one surviving to make another contribution to the indie game monument. You can understand that free advertising is always nice to have! Not only that, but we also made nice contacts with the streamers there and, hopefully, you'll see more of our game with them in the coming months!



To conclude: Thanks for your support! And stay tuned to discover more about City Ambulance: Rescue Express!

Hi everyone,

We are so happy to announce that City Ambulance: Rescue Express has been selected by the jury of french contest "La Game Cup" to be amongst the 3 finalists in the BOSS category.



This contest is held by KissKissBankBank, a french crowdfunding platform, and La Banque Postale, the banking service of the french postal service. The winner will get a headstart of 20 000€ (21,699$US) in its KissKissBankBank crowdfunding campaign, an assured win!

>>> VOTE FOR US <<<

Winning this contest would tremendously help Manufacture 43 in making City Ambulance: Rescue Express a reality. The economic situation has been difficult for everyone and that includes us too.



Winning the contest is done by public vote on the website of La Game Cup. It is done by a simple click of "Je vote pour ce jeu" (french for "I vote for this game") under the name of the game, on the website.

Voting will happen in three phases. The first phase is happening right now! The second phase will be in September, we will notice you again. The last step will happen in public in Angoulême, France, where the team will be. Drop by if you want to meet us :)

You can also help us by sharing the link to your friends and family and ask them to vote for us too.

Thanks for reading us!

Daniel & Thomas