Prerelease:Disney's Toontown Online/Early Development

This is a sub-page of Prerelease:Disney's Toontown Online.

Initial Pitch (1998-1999)

Following the success of Toon Tag and after completion of the DisneyQuest attraction in June 1998, Jesse Schnell, who worked at the Walt Disney VR Studio since 1995 went on to pitch family-focused MMORPG games because they were worried about not being able to create any more attractions and the studio shutting down.

Schnell initially pitched an idea referred to as "The Massively Multiplayer Online Theme Park", where it would have a whopping 20 games with a developmental budget of $100 million dollars. After months of adjustments and changes to the pitch, it would be picked up by Disney, where development would be led by the VR studio.

They needed to create a prototype out of one of the games so they went with one based off Atlantis: The Lost Empire, a movie that was in production at that time, because Disney had high hopes for the film's expectations. They thought the ideas would be suitable for a video game with that genre. The idea did not last long because due to the film not fitting the game's target audience of kids 7-12.

After the idea was scrapped, the team went with the second MMORPG pitch where the general idea was a world of cartoon characters living together, which would be Toontown. The idea was much more favorable because the property had not been done as much, and allowed the developers to have more creative freedom. Development officially started in 2000, with a team of 15 to 50 developers.

Early Concepts

Designing the Style

Felipe Lara, Bruce Woodside and Diane Lu handled the game's artistic direction, while Lara served as the Art Director. Not only the style was influenced by Toontown at Disneyland and the Mickey's Toontown Fair at Walt Disney World but they also took ideas from Disney-produced cartoons like Silly Symphonies, and other media like Duckburg from Ducktales.

Early Map Draft

A VERY early rough map draft of Toontown was drawn around this point, which were divided into four corners representing the negative sides of everyday life in the form of a bullet-pointed list below.

Factory	School	City	Neighborhood
Businessmen Toxic Waste Pollution Deforestation	Teachers Vice Principals Gym Teachers Bullies Cafeteria	Businessmen Dentist Mr. Cool Grocery Store Boring Restaurant/Fancy Restaurant News Channel	Bullies Crazy Neighbors Barky Dogs Relatives Chores Dangerous Cars Clean Freaks

Interestingly, the four corners would also be the basis for what would be the Cog Headquarters in the final. The factory locale idea would be revisited as Sellbot Headquarters, and the City locale would be loosely used for Cashbot and Lawbot Headquarters.

Designing the Contrast

When conceptualizing the whimsical world of Toontown, the developers needed a sort of enemy to contrast the game's colorful world in order to give the game an objective. Jesse Schnell explains it further;

"We needed some kind of enemy. And early design involved 'everything kids hate' – so, there was an evil school teacher, evil dentist, things like that. At some point, though, the notion of the evil corporation seemed to be the strongest, simplest, and most defensible, and ‘work vs. play’ sort of bubbled out of that."

— Jesse Schnell, [1]", Work Vs. Play - The Story Behind Disney's Toontown Online.

The evil corporation was decided on in the end, thus the mantra of "Work Vs. Play" was formed. The idea would be eventually narrowed down to Suits, which would be Cogs in the final.

Toon Concepts

The designs for Toon species were drawn from the "rich history and traditions of Walt Disney animation", where each of them had to be unique so they can be easily identified. The goal in mind was to make the player feel at home with Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters. The Dog species was likely the first to be designed, due to many different animation files being named after it.

(Source: Developer Spotlight, November/December 2008 Toontown Newsletter)

Concept art of Flippy acting out different Emotions.	Similar art, except applied towards other Toon species.

Several different ideas for Emotions were drawn out, with Flippy being used as a mascot. It was officially posted to the Toontown Online website in 2003, albeit in a much lower resolution and was remade as a poster for the official Newsletter. Many of the Emotions on the concept art didn't make it to the final or was added in later on;

• Laugh was originally called "Laff".
• The infamous Taunt Emotion matches up with the unused animations and sound from the files.
• The Wink and Idea Emotions were scrapped.
• The Surprize emotion was originally different; it would have been based off what was seen in the 2003 commercial rather than reusing the attacked animation.
• Shrug was called "Don't Know", and Delighted was called "The Giant Smile" or "Big Smile".
• Really Sad originally had tears coming out of the eyes.

Suit Concepts

At that point of development, Cogs were originally called Suits and were not robotic. They were designed with a unique look that hardly resembled the style of Disney Cartoons, going further with the contrasting theme.

They were divided into four different types; Social, Money, Legal and Corporate. A rough sketch of the enemies and the types belonging to them were first drawn up in many different shapes and body sizes;

Sketches of Suits were done in many different unique shapes. Only four body shapes would be reused in the final, with some repurposed for heads.	Rough sketches of Suit Heads, with a general idea of the designs.

Many of the ideas made it to the final, though there are some changes:

• Suits had an unequal number of types rather than each of them having eight.
• There was originally a Corporate Suit called a Blowhard, which is someone that would go on to dominate politics.
• The Mover and Shaker was originally in the Corporate type, as opposed to a Social (Sellbot).
• A Head Honcho Suit was scrapped likely due to it being too similar to The Big Cheese in terms of theming.
• The Kissup Suit was scrapped for being too similar to The Mingler.
• The Two-Face was originally called "2-Faced".

Later, the types of Suits were decided and all equalized into eight.

Some changes still remain in the height chart.

• The Social type was renamed to Sales at that point.
• There originally seemed to be a "fourth" body type, used by the highest-ranking Suits before they were replaced.
• The Cold Caller and Downsizer were originally conceptualized to be feminine, while the Micromanager was masculine.
• The outfit colors of the Sales and Corporate Suits were switched.

Toons Fighting Suits

The finalized concept of a Toon fighting the enemy with a pie. This appears to be the earliest concept due to Flippy's brown design being present all the way until the later builds.

Choosing the Engine

When it came to the game's engine, they were unsure if they wanted to create their own engine or use any of the pre-existing game engines which led to many conflicting reasons. In the end, they settled with Panda3D, which was perfect for capturing the comical animations and effects in that engine.

According to a design document, they initially opted for Squeak for programming but they switched to Python due to viability.

Later Concepts

Concepts that are dated around March 2000 or later, before going onto develop the game in 3D.

Battle System

The team went with a turn-based battle system for regular Cog Battles, because they thought it would have "cross-gender appeal"; in that case, boys liking the action and girls being able to take the time to make decisions. Retrospectively, they wanted to go with action-based combat due to the extensive amount of time in balancing the battle system. The real-time battle system would be implemented in Cog Boss Battles in later updates.

Storyboards

A storyboard of how the Suit Battle would play out, with some minor differences in comparison to the final. The first six boards have been transcribed from the paper sheet containing them in the text.

Notably, a digital version of the seltzer bottle storyboard would appear into the Toontorial in the final game. And, Flippy and the Downsizer from the anvil storyboard would be added onto the Toontown Beta website.

You encounter a Junior Flunky on the street. Do you want to try make him laugh? YES/NO	You can SQUIRT/THROW/DROP	You can SQUIRT/THROW/DROP
Encounter a Suit on the Street - at this point, you can decide whether you want to attack or run away.	If you decide to stay, you can check your inventory of gag weapons acquired from Mini-games.	Choose your Gag Attack.
You throw a pie at a Junior Flunky!	Your pie hits Junior Flunky in the face. He is not amused.	Uh-oh, junior flunky managed to side-step your pie. Get ready for an attack!
Animation Plays.	If your weapon was effective, the Suit takes damage which registers on his bar graph.	If the Suit takes defensive action, you take damage as registered on your Laff-O-Meter, and the Suit prepares to attack.

The rest of the storyboard don't have captions underneath and were released separately.

Oh no! Junior flunky has decided to use the dreaded pen attack!
Junior Flunky gets a sudden splitting headache!	Wotta CLOWN!

Other Concepts

Misc stuff.

		An early version of the Finger Wag attack. The symbols would be replaced with "Blah blah blah" in the final.

When Toons won the battle, they'd be "pulled out" of it via a cane for comedic effect. The third storyboard appears to show a sort of "door" where battles were likely supposed to take place in a sort of "battlefield" background rather than actually on the Streets.

Customization

Examples of customizable Toon Heads, using the dog species as a reference. Interestingly, this one shows the scrapped concept of eye and nose sizes.

3D Mockups for Toon Heads and body shapes/sizes, along with colors. All colors made it to the final but they have small RGB variations in comparison to the final.

When it came to conceptualizing clothing for Toons, they discussed what kinds would be liked by the players. They were all designed with the clothes, keeping in mind that will be worn by different Toon Species. Below are some basic clothing concepts for Toons;

Some of the ideas (that aren't marked with a tick) would not make it to the final, likely due to the limitation of having to work in more clothing meshes. According to the Spotify leak, it seemed that coats were originally considered for customization but only textures remain of it.

Later Suit Drafts

A much later version of the suits used for 3D modelling reference, with the finalized Corporate outfit colors has some interesting changes:

Sketches of Suits were done in many different unique shapes.	Renders of Suits, lacking the bolts from their outfits.

• The Money Suit is likely an early version of the Number Cruncher, because it shares the same head shape. It had no numbers around the mouth and had a different and bigger body type.
• The Legal Suit matches up to that of the Bigwig, except without the wig. The face resembles that of the Sellbot Headquarters Factory entrance.
• The Cold Caller originally had no blue hair.
• The Micromanager originally had a Sales (Sellbot) suit, which would be replaced in the final.

Second Map Concept

A slightly later map draft of Toontown, this time with basic surrounding Streets and Safe Zone ideas, the latter of which would evolve into neighborhoods. It was conceptualized after the first design document.

The following Safe Zones on the left;

• Toon Hall
• Skating Ring
• Shrinky Dink Center
• The Inflatorium
• Swelled Head Park
• Tag Territory
• Dumbo's Flight School
• Topsy Turvy Terrace
• Swimming Hole
• Cannonball Express
• Alice's Hedge Maze
• Wandering Wheel
• Mirror Monument
• Jumping Junction
• Mt. Gushmore
• Pesky Pigeon Plaza

Though the top-right part of the header legend is cut off, those likely correlate to Suit Territories in terms of color;

• Red Brick: Industrial
• White/Pastel: Residental Apts.
•  ????: Residental Suburbs
• City Shops
• Woods
• Banking