Welcome back to Backstage: Corporate Clash, your one-stop shop for the details of Corporate Clash development! Continuing from Part 1 where we explored the development process of Derrick Man, LAA and PRR, we will be exploring the Directors instance today. Let's dive right in!

The Directors

We will first cover the individual managers and then discuss topics related to the instance itself.

This section will include significant discussion of the Directors' personalities. On the surface, this may seem redundant since each character only has one line of dialogue in-game. However, this development informs future appearances of the characters. They may only have one line of dialogue, but who's to say that they might not appear elsewhere in the future?

Derrick Hand

Each manager in the Directors instance is designed as a replacement for one of the previous taskline managers. For example, the Derrick Hand is the successor to the Derrick Man. Cyd, one of our intrepid lore writers, spoke about developing his character:

"The Taskline Managers definitely have a lot of interesting and wonderful personalities, there was a lot of passion and love put into making them who they are now. When I wrote the Derrick Hand, I wanted him to be different from the Derrick Man. Most of the other managers are charismatic, but I wanted to make Hand stand out in a more serious way. In comparison the DOPA and DOLD, Derrick Hand is hot-headed, full of himself, and jumps to conclusions when he shouldn't. He's the most serious out of the three and has no tolerance for Toons at all. I figured that the group needed someone who was DIFFERENT sure, but also unique in his own way and is extremely upfront about his disdain for Toons. 

"He's a cool Suit, and I was very happy to write him the way I did, because I wanted some mystery and some seriousness compared to the others. Maybe not Robert Cyger level of seriousness, but it's clear he does have some flaws and weaknesses that shape how he is, even if it might not be able to be shown with what little dialogue he has - it's always good to leave these kind of things up for interpretation, while also adding a bit of personality to it. So, a lot of who he is mysterious, but yet intriguing."

Designing the Derrick Hand

AnonymousAvocado, the arts who concepted the Derrick Hand design, spoke about the process of developing the new head:

"The fun and challenging part of designing Derrick Hand was how to make him look similar to Derrick Man while also making him a distinct character. I started by exaggerating a lot of Derrick Man’s features. For example, I took his goggles and made them into a visor, I made the hard hat more grand with pipes on the top that oozed more oil, and so on. The biggest change to Derrick Hand's design was turning his mouth into a drill. This addition was my personal favorite change because not only did it fit with the ‘Derrick’ character, but it also led to some fun head animations!"

Derrick Hand 2D animation proposal by Berkie.

Director of Land Development

Developing the character of the Directors was not an easy task. Each of them has only one line in their cutscene, making them the least defined of the taskline managers. This also means that avenues of externalizing the new characterization were limited. Each of the Directors had different writers working on developing the characters, which led to different approaches for each manager. Some writers, like Enoch in relation to the DOLD, took simple approaches to their characters:

"No complex decisions were really made with the DOLD. While the LAA is a Texan land mogul obsessed with construction and development, the DOLD is a confident and driven cowboy. Ultimately, he is a stronger, superior counterpart to LAA."

Designing the DOLD

Mailman, who created the concept art for the new DOLD, spoke on his work:

"The DOLD was the first cog I ever designed for Clash. His design was for my concept art application, which was a long time ago now. I think it predates 1.2! The DOLD’s concept is relatively straightforward, I mainly just incorporated construction elements wherever possible. His jaw is supposed to look similar to bulldozers. He also has a traffic cone hat and caution tape embellishments."

Initial animations by NonsensicalThings, made in 2021. Animations were later redone to better fit those of Derrick Hand and DOPA. Final animations done by Berkie.

Director of Public Affairs

You may have noticed that this fight used to be referred to as the Director of Public Affairs instance. This was changed as part of the Hires and Heroes update. The DOPA did not outrank the other three in a lore or gameplay sense, so we felt it was misleading to call this fight "the DOPA instance."

Rewriting the DOPA

Timer, one of the writers tasked with developing the DOPA, told us about their development process:

"When Salem and I were writing DOPA, our first conclusion was that we didn't want them to just be "the PRR's replacement," at least not as a character. That was how COGS, Inc. felt about them, but as a person we wanted to make them unique from their predecessor. The second conclusion we came to was that the DOPA needed to have some kind of background or experience in interacting with the public, since that was Winston's job before things went south. When we started brainstorming, we thought "What kind of person is good at building rapport, relating to people, and holding an audience's attention?" Radio broadcasters! And thus, Dana Charme was born! Your friendly and suave neighborhood radio show host that used to play smooth suit tunes on the airwaves at night. We later found a way to tie Dana to Tawney through his radio show, as you may remember from this year's C.O.O. instance.

"Working for COGS, Inc. requires you to have something up your sleeve, so we couldn't just make Dana your innocent local celebrity with no ulterior motives. The approach we took to address this was to make a "better" version of the PRR. Winston's downfall came from him being too nice. That is to say, he was so nice that he lost his edge and allowed himself to be played by the Toons. Dana needs to be more sinister and conniving, but also suave and silver-tongued. He needed enough of that detached Suit mentality to hop positions into one that pays more at the cost of common morality. I don't think she was expecting to get beat up on the first day of the job, but hey, life is full of surprises! If anything, it might give him the sort of resentment for your job that we all know and love. At least she and Tawney are getting along."

Redesigning the DOPA

AnonymousAvocado, the concept artist behind both the PRR and the DOPA, commented on his work on both managers:

"Fun fact: I created the DOPA design first and worked down from that to create the PRR. Mixing Skelecog and radio features was my favorite part about their designs. You can especially see this in the DOPA design as their head takes several design aspects from Suit Skelecogs as well as the base of a vintage radio. I added a spiral hypnotic design to both designs' eyes to emphasize their persuasive marketing abilities."

DOPA animations. Model by FoxthatRox, texture by Basher, animations by Polygon.

The Chairman

The Chairman is not a taskline manager, but he appears in the opening cutscene for the Directors instance. He was also renovated for the Hires and Heroes update, so that project was internally considered to be alongside the taskline manager redevelopments.

Redesigning the Chairman

The Chairman is one of the oldest original characters in Corporate Clash. Before the Hires and Heroes update, his head model was the first animated Cog head developed and the first to be used in-game. In fact, the Chairman's original head model was created in 2017 - which means that it predates Corporate Clash as a game! As much of a pioneer as it had been during 1.0, by 2022 it was showing its age. The Kudos managers had much more expressive and technically impressive animations, building on the groundwork that the Chairman's head animation had established. It was time for a revamp.

The approach for the new Chairman head was similar to that of the Derrick Man: make an HD version of the existing head. The result was something much closer in style to the head of the Chief Operating Officer, which was developed several years later and was noticeable more expressive.

The Directors Instance

The goal of the taskline managers was to create capstone encounters for playgrounds that did not have department bosses. In the absence of a Headquarters for the Boardbots, an instance was created for the Drowsy Dreamland playground. The Chairman appears in the opening cutscene as a sort-of teaser for the future direction of the storyline. That is to say, the player will eventually be going after the Chairman.

Rewriting the Directors

Duke, who developed the new cutscene and contributed to its writing, said that the Directors cutscenes had the longest development process of the four instances:

"The first work on the new Directors instance began in August of 2021. Some of the lore writers had been discussing the instance and we concluded that the writing of the cutscenes were somewhat janky. We decided to rewrite the cutscene. However, the editor did not exist at this time, so we knew that any changes to the cutscene would have to be small. The new cutscenes reflects this, as it is mostly the same as the old cutscene but with the writing cleaned up to make more sense. Actual development work on the cutscene did not begin until April of 2022.

"The Directors cutscenes were by far the most difficult of the taskline cutscenes to make. The editor was very new when I was working on the Directors cutscenes. It had limited functionality, part of which meant that boss Cogs were not compatible with it. This meant that I couldn't make the Directors cutscenes with the editor, since both included the Chief Executive Officer. Making cutscenes in Python is very difficult. It is, essentially, a trial by error process where you have to work blind. You have no way of knowing exactly what the cutscene is going to look like until you test it in-game. The production of the new cutscene was a long process of rewriting code, starting the game, crashing the game, and repeating while I tried to figure out why the game crashed. This process also happens with editor cutscenes, but you don't have to go through this process until the very end, when the cutscene is done and you're trying to implement it."

First draft of the new Directors opening cutscene.

Composing the Directors

Duke spoke further to us about the development of the Directors music:

"The original Directors music was written by MasterFrasca in 2018 and was one of the more well-regarded tracks in the game at launch. The track was also beloved by many members of the team, so it at first seemed like a confusing prospect when I wanted to create new music for the instance. However, with the new cutscene that the instance would be getting, I felt it was best to approach the instance with a new musical lens. However, I also recognized that the existing music was widely liked, so I tried to build on the musical concepts rather than replace them entirely.

"I enjoyed the tension of the opening cutscene music and sought to magnify it with a more gradual buildup to the reveal of the Chairman. The opening is sparser while incorporating the motifs and general feeling of the original. Of note is the motivic callbacks to the music tracks for the original managers each time the C.E.O. mentions them.

"This interest in musical callbacks extended to the battle music as well. I wanted each section to pay homage to one of the managers. The section from the beginning to 1:02 pays homage to the Derrick Man, 1:02 to 1:41 pays homage to the Land Acquisition Architect, and the section from 1:41 to the end pays homage to the Public Relations Representative. I also wanted the track to be livelier than the existing battle music, hence the fast-paced jazz aesthetics of the new music.

The project also included music for the ending cutscene, which previously had no music. I generally went for a similar theme as the opening cutscene with some extra timed-out bits related to the events of the cutscene."

Wrap-Up

What does the future hold for the taskline managers? Well, to paraphrase the Chief Operating Officer, we're not at liberty to tell you that information. However, we can promise you that we are planning some very exciting things for the future of Corporate Clash. As the game continues to develop, the taskline managers will also continue to evolve and change.

That's going to do it for today's Backstage post! Thank you very much for your continued support of Corporate Clash. None of the developments discussed in this blogpost would have been possible without your support throughout the years. We hope you found this blog to be interesting, and we hope you're excited for the upcoming content we have in the works. Stay TOONed!