If you appreciate the work done within the wiki, please consider supporting The Cutting Room Floor on Patreon. Thanks for all your support!
This article has a talk page!

Prerelease:Disney's Toontown Online

From The Cutting Room Floor
Jump to navigation Jump to search

This page details prerelease information and/or media for Disney's Toontown Online.

Cactus feels all lost and stuff.
This page covers the pre-beta/alpha version of Disney's Toontown Online, not the beta Version.
You can find the Beta coverage in the prototype section.
Hmmm...
To do:
So much stuff.

Disney's Toontown Online was the Walt Disney company's first take on a MMORPG, as well as one of the first to be targeted at a younger audience which became one of the core gameplay concepts. It also had a rather enigmatic development phase which would be revealed by former staff that worked on this game, going through many different ambitious concepts before they were settled on.

It had become one of the most famous MMORPGs of the 2000s in its breakout era, allowing for many updates to be released for the game's decade-long lifespan before it would abruptly close. Despite that, it still manages to have a following and some private servers to this very day.

Development Timeline

1998-1999

  • circa. June 1998 - Toon Tag opens at Epcot, Innovations East, which would be the basis of the game. Also around the time of DisneyQuest's opening, Jesse Schnell started to focus on the idea of family-friendly MMORPGs because he was worried about the VR Studio closing down.
  • 1998-1999 - Jesse Schnell starts to create a pitch for an MMORPG, titled "The Massively Multiplayer Online Theme Park" which would have 20 MMORPGs in one.
  • circa. 1999 - Disney picks up the idea for the pitch, where they went with developing an MMROPG based on the in-progress movie Atlantis: The Lost Empire first due to high expectations. The project would be canned due to the movie not meeting the game's intended target audience.
  • circa. late 1999 - Disney's Toontown Online is pitched, as the second of the 20 MMORPG plan which would be approved.

2000

  • Early 2000 - Toontown Online begins development after the initial pitch.
  • Mar 1. - The game is initially prototyped.

2001

  • Aug. - Testing begins on Beta 1. The game then was very unstable at the time and a lot of differences could be found.

2002

  • Jan. 16 - Testing for Beta 1 ended.
  • Sep. 10 - Beta 2 Testing begins on this date. Unlike Beta 1, the game was much more stable and only lasted for one month. Also, a lot more Gameplay elements were implemented during the time.
  • Oct. 21 - Beta 3 begins.

2003

  • Jun. 2 - The game is finally released to the public.

Sub-Pages

Differences
Lots and lots of cut and revised content...even in updates!

Base Game

1998-Early 2000

Toontown-CogFightingConcept 2.jpg
Early Development
circa 1998-2000. The initial idea of how it came to be.

2000

TTO Alpha 1998Image.jpg
Early Alpha Builds
March-April 2000.
TTO V1.0. DesignDocument.png
Design Document 1.0
May 7, 2000.
TTO UIMockupImage.jpg
Mid Alpha Builds
Late May-Sep 2000.
TTO Alpha 1998Image.jpg
Later Alpha Builds
circa. Oct-Dec. 2000. Where the Cogs come in...

2001-Mid 2003

TTO Alpha 1998Image.jpg
Design Document 2.6
February 7, 2001.
TTO Alpha 1998Image.jpg
Pre-Beta Builds
circa. Spring-Summer 2001.
TTO Alpha 1998Image.jpg
Beta Development
circa. Summmer 2001-Spring 2003

Unsorted

Toontown-CogFightingConcept 2.jpg
Early Development
circa 1998-2000. The initial idea of how it came to be.
TTO Alpha 1998Image.jpg
2000
The basic gameplay is formed, adding and cutting elements along the way.
TTO 2001 PrereleaseImage.jpg
2001
TTO 2001 PrereleaseImage.jpg
2002-2003

Expansions

TTO BossbotArmFactoryImage.jpg
2003

Expansions

This section will mainly cover concept art that was posted around this period.

2001

Winter-Spring

Concept Art

Create-A-Toon concepts, showing the Toon in a workshop and a clothing store. Those background graphics can also be found in the Spotify leak.

Parts Mockup Clothing Mockup
TTO Make-A-Toon Mockup1.png TTO Make-A-Toon Mockup2.png

February

Design Document 2.6

Near-Final Map
TTO OriginalBetaMap.jpg

The map with eight different neighborhoods were drawn and became the basis for the map in the Shticker Book. Only six of the neighborhoods were able to be released. Many of the locations, via an extracted graphic would be blurred out, leading to many infamous rumors throughout the fandom. This map was designed around February 7, 2001 according to a design document.

The blurred-out locations had remained to be a mystery in the fandom for years until YouTuber LoopyGoopyG managed to get a full and unblurred graphic in 2017, revealing the locations. The map shows an interesting number of changes and scrapped locations;

  • Next to Daisy Gardens and Toontown Central was originally Goofy Coliseum. It was supposed to be a playground based off of the 1973 illustrated children's book "Goofy the Sportsman". The playground was supposed to include activities mentioned in the book, such as pole vaulting, chariot racing, and canoeing. It was ultimately canned because the development team hadn't finalized their ideas for sports, and they couldn't figure out how to turn it into a neighborhood.
  • Near Donald's Dreamland and Minnie's Melodyland was a place called Funny Farm, where everything was in black-and-white reminiscent of old cartoons. According to the ToontownGlobals.py in the source code, Funny Farm has a zone ID of 7000, was planned to have assets in phase archive 8, and is listed as "not done yet" in dnaMap, the array list that indexes street and playground data. This suggests it never got past the concept stage.
    • In case players somehow end up here, the game clones Toontown Central (hence the famous glitch that teleported players into a broken Toontown Central). For the Field Offices update, some shopkeeper NPCs were added under the zone ID 7000, as a fallback. The game explicitly says so :
        if not self.shopOwnerNpc:
            self.notify.warning('No shopkeeper in this cogdominium, using FunnyFarm Sellbot FO NPCToons')
  • Under Toontown Central, Donald's Dock and Daisy Gardens was an area called Construction Zone. It was based off of many early cartoon depictions of construction sites. The plan was that players could climb and jump around wacky construction sites with dangerous events. This possibly was cut due to technical limitations, but may have also been because the development team deemed it unnecessary. ToontownGlobals.py also lists it as having assets in phase 8, and as having no street or playground data. Its zone ID is 6000.
ConstructionZoneLeak.JPG
    • Interestingly enough, the location name itself was originally spotted at ToonFest 2006 held in Burbank with the blurred out location in its place on a computer likely of a developer build of the game. When asked about the location to the staff there, they did not want to say anything about it.
  • The Cog Headquarters were all mixed up, and was likely planned at this point of development instead of a singular location consisting of factories focusing on different Cog types.
    • Cashbot Headquarters was located in Daisy Gardens instead of Donald's Dreamland.
    • Sellbot Headquarters was located in The Brrrgh instead of Daisy Gardens.
    • Lawbot Headquarters was originally located in the scrapped Construction Zone location instead of The Brrrgh.
    • Bossbot Headquarters was located in Donald's Dreamland instead of Chip 'N' Dale's Acorn Acres.
(Source: MMO Central Forums)

Late Playground Renders

Between the Safe Zone Activities from September and the Designer's Atlas from February 2001, the renders of the Playgrounds are made, except in a very early state.

Toontown Central


Daisy Gardens

DaisyGardenConceptArt.jpg

April

Several clothing textures that were made on April 4, 2001. These appear to be after the "dresses" were scrapped at this point.

TTO Final Rendered Avatar Clothing Maps1.png
TTO Final Rendered Avatar Clothing Maps2.png
TTO Final Rendered Avatar Clothing Maps3.png
TTO Final Rendered Avatar Clothing Maps4.png
TTO Final Rendered Avatar Clothing Maps5.png
TTO Final Rendered Avatar Clothing Maps6.png
TTO Final Rendered Avatar Clothing Maps7.png
TTO Final Rendered Avatar Clothing Maps8.png

Unknown

Fighting With Other Toons

Toontown-CogFightingConcept 3.jpg

This artwork shows a concept of other Toons participating in Cog Battles, which details a rough idea of the setting and other appearances of Toon species. The gags present in the artwork appear in the final, with the exception of the fire hydrant, which may have been reworked into the Fire Hose. Interestingly, Toons are seen wearing Accessories there, which would not be added until very late into the game's lifespan.

Beta 1 Installer Screenshots

From the installer of Toontown Online Beta 1 in September, they show drastically earlier images of the game.

Beta 1 Installer sv1.0.5 sv1.0.24.02
TTO-CreateAToon-Alpha.png

Create-A-Toon was slowly starting to take its final form in this build, in comparison to the Alpha leaks.

  • The background was different, which had a Piet Mondrian painting in the background.
  • The Mickey Mouse model looked lower-poly, resembling that of the Toon Tag build.
  • There was a suspender-type outfit from the earlier builds that was available on the Create-A-Toon.
Beta 1 Installer sv1.0.5 (Recreation)
TTO-TTC-Alpha.png
  • Toon Name Tags were yellow instead of orange.
  • The font for Toon name tags used Comic Sans MS instead of ImpressBT.
  • The Laff Meter had a slightly different design, and used the cat instead of a dog likely for placeholder purposes.
  • The starting Laff Meter was originally 50 instead of 15.
  • The shirt textures were different and brighter, some of them would end up being scrapped.
  • Toons originally had colored gloves, a design that would remain on Gus Gooseburger and Chicken Louie NPCs.
Beta 1 Installer sv1.0.5 (Recreation)
TTO-Trolley-Alpha.png
  • The Trolley seemed to be unfinished, where it had placeholder-y blue textures on some parts.
  • The Trolley games sign was different.
  • The running on the trolley glitch seemed to be present in this build.
Beta 1 Installer sv1.0.5 (Recreation) sv1.0.24.02
TTO-CogBattle-Alpha.png

Quite possibly the earliest screenshot out of the batch, resembling that of the earlier builds.

  • Donald's Dock looks very incomplete, where the foundation is set but the textures are in a placeholder state while the sky is teal rather than cloudy. The door, window and lamp textures are also reused from Toontown Central.
  • The BigWig's outfit was purple rather than blue; that matches with an early draft of the Legal Suits (Lawbots) that had textures that would be used for Sellbot outfits. The outfit also lacks any screws and bolts, which would become a staple for Cogs to distinct them from real businessmen.
  • The unused squirt animation is present in this screenshot except with the Seltzer instead of Fire Hose.
  • The Toon was colored white, which cannot be obtained in the final except with the No Color Just For Fun ToonTask reward.

Summer

Developer Images

A few developer images were released.

Beta 1 Installer sv1.0.5 (Recreation)
TTO 2001 PrereleaseImage.jpg
  • Most of the final shirt textures have been implemented.
  • The infamous "sign lamp" is seen in The Brrrgh.
  • The ImpressBT font is being used for notices, while the text font still uses Comic Sans MS.
  • The Laff Meter didn't show the health visually being decreased.

Later Scrapped Concepts

Scrapped Music

https://web.archive.org/web/20210128175208/https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BIOD7XJ-1diHOzFqKCjhRhtQlKqfo9ev1HRevn50wj0/edit#gid=0 Context by Jesse Schell [here https://old.reddit.com/r/Toontown/comments/gaejax/i_decided_to_ask_jesse_schell_about_the_unused/]

The Toontown FY10-11 Story

https://old.reddit.com/r/Toontown/comments/ivz2aa/the_toontown_fy1011_story_taken_from_the_toontown/ From the Toontown Online Development Archives, there is a story diagram detailing the plans that would happen throughout 2010-2011.

Many of the plans had happened over the timespan, with the notable exception of the "Supreme Cog Leader" which never appeared at the end of the fiscal year of 2011. It was meant to be a prelude to Toontown 2.0.

Additional Field Offices

https://old.reddit.com/r/Toontown/comments/geysmx/in_light_of_recent_events_take_this_neverbefore/ Besides Sellbot Mover and Shaker Field Offices, there were planned to be ones for other Cog Types.

References