Introduction

Howdy, Toons! Today's backstage is dedicated to a special something that tends to go unnoticed... something meant to be that way. Today we're joined by one of our sound designers, Maven, to discuss the sound effects of Corporate Clash, and the oft invisible design choices that go into making you (yes, you!) feel like a part of this wonderfully Toony world.

Let's get into it!

Starting Small

The audio section of the Creative team has always been rather small, when compared to the overall scale of the team. While Creative makes up nearly a third of the total staff, typically hovering between 30 and 40 members, audio as a whole (music and sound design) may only consist of 6 or 7. And within that tiny number, you'll find our sound designers at only 2 or 3 active folks at most. 

These few sound designers usually come with a wide variety of skills, due to how few of them there are. Some have been voice actors, sound designers for film and video projects, or even artists in music production.

"I remember entering training for Sound Designer in October 2021. I applied on a whim, not thinking I would be accepted due to my lack of experience. I only had a year or so of light messing around in FL Studio 20 and Audacity under my belt, and I had only been an active player of Corporate Clash for about a month at the time. At that point, our Creative team was antsy to really experiment with what we could add to the game. We had some unique sounds, such as the battle SFX for the Litigation Team, and the voice of the CLO. The rest of the world, on the other hand, was lacking in quite a bit of spice. Thus, my first assignment was to create ambience for Ye Olde Toontown – those Crows and Ravens that play at random intervals.

" At the time, this was quite impressive! We only had one other sound designer at the time: Duke Trickyflip, whose hands were tied up in the musical development of the Hires & Heroes update. Understandably, SFX fell to the wayside. I received some other assignments such as creating some SFX for the newly released Toono game from the 1.2.5 update, and creating a simple golf cart engine loop for both the mini game and Bossbot courses. The most intriguing assignment came in the form of a voice acting request... Creative Leadership wanted to experiment with limited voice acting in the cutscene of the Public Relations Representative, formerly known as the Director of Public Relations."

ERROR–

"This... wasn't particularly well received. The idea was passed on, but it did spark another concept that would be carried to fruition."

What if We Could Do More?

"I remember when I got this assignment, one of the first I got out of training. The first, and what was planned to be the only candidate for this Suit voice experiment in 1.3, was the Multislacker. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew I had to make it work somehow–I even bought a whole new mic setup JUST for Clash.

"Of course, I say all that like my life depended on it. To me, it was extremely important; this was everything Corporate Clash was about. Corporate Clash has always been character-first in its storytelling, looooong since before I got here, and what better way to build a character than to help craft how they present themselves? The appearance, the music, how they speak, and what their battles sound like–it's all a part of a singular performance, telling you exactly who this character is.

At this time, the Hires & Heroes update was still a long ways out. Because this type of sound was so foreign to the world of Corporate Clash (outside of just the C.L.O. and Redd Heir Wing) we thought, "what better way to test the waters with fans than to try out this fun new tech on some old favorites?"

The First (Official) Suit Voices

Adding voices to managers was seen as not only a huge risk, but a huge sink of resources into a very small section of a single team. The C.L.O. was special, she was a boss Cog. Similarly, Redd was an April Toons manager. Do we really have the bandwidth to give unique voiceovers to every single manager, and would it even be worth it? And so, the test drive was initiated.

"Multislacker was finally in a place that most were happy with come late-December, after much trying and failing at using the new mic and testing out all kinds of filters and techniques. I remember the team still being extremely unsure of my strong desire to continue working on Suit voices. It was around the holidays of 2021 that I received an awesome present: the Creative team wanted me to create voices for my favorite Cogs for April Toons!"

The Litigation Team as the first official Suit voices came naturally: during their development, the Crew had already had a scrapped plan for giving them unique explosion SFX. With the audio department now capable of creating entire unique voices, this idea was revived and implemented in that fateful April Toons of 2022.

"I didn't really have much of a process down yet, to be completely honest. The first batch was not good at all.

This one wasn't that popular on the Crew – you either loved it or hated it.

"With every failure came a better understanding of what the Crew did and didn't see in our future for speaking Suits.

A common trope in earlier Suit voice work: lots of reverb.

"I had a lot of doubts, too, even as the Crew inched closer and closer to approving of the concepts. This would be the first instance of this type of work of mine making it into the game. What if it was just too weird? What if the community hated it? I had never put such experimental work of mine out there, and at the time this was the most eyes my audio work would've ever seen. I even considered outright leaving the Crew if the reception was too bad – that's how badly I wanted to continue this type of work."

And then came April Toons 2022, with the voices being received... very positively!

One Person, 22 Suits

With the Crew now in pursuit of creating voices as a part of Suit manager character development, there needed to be a pipeline.

"I honestly don't use all that much in the way of hardware and software. I primarily try and get creative with recording and editing techniques to stretch my one voice so far. Though I will say, there are a few that I even worry about to this day that they sound too much like... me, instead of the Suit. It's hard getting used to hearing your voice in recordings to edit if you're not an experienced voice actor, that was probably the single most difficult mental hurdle."

And so, with time, that pipeline began to take shape. Record voice lines, plug it into a chain of filters, and tweak till you get that perfect robotic sound – "compressed, tin-like, a bit of dirt in the speakers," as former Audio Director Francine put it, when referring to the development of the C.L.O.'s voice. Level out the audio to prepare to implement, and render it out.

"The funny thing about Panda3D in our current workflow, I always tell this to new sound designers, you have to export stuff REALLY loud. For whatever reason, Suit voices and battle moves always came out very quiet, especially for those of us using FL Studio. I typically circumvent it by throwing FL Studio exports into Audacity, or amplifying them in Edison within FL Studio. This is why if you ever go into the game's files for SFX, you'll notice some things are WAY louder than they are in game, sometimes even peaking or clipping."

Peaking/clipping in the audio waveform of a Wrecking Ball file, indicated in red. This sounds completely fine in game, by the way.

"This happens because we do not have an industry-standard workflow for SFX development. Panda3D, as some of you tech-affluent folks out there may be aware, isn't the easiest to build onto. We don't currently utilize middleware, or software such as FMOD or WWise meant to assist sound designers in implementation of SFX. Instead, our current workflow involves building a test concept of a sound, getting approval, having a tech implement it for QA, exporting the file again for adjustments based on feedback, implementing it for QA again, repeat until it's up to snuff. All that being said, I'm happy we've found a pipeline that's workable! Even if we're missing some industry-standard tooling."

Even with a functional workflow for audio rendering, there still was work to be done: creating the voices themselves. 

"Audio work in 1.3 sort of coincided with the development of the newly-formed Writing team. With a greater emphasis on building out characters, came a greater emphasis on the performance of it all. Each character has an identity meant to be heard through their voices. The style of their writing lent rather well to planning out how to approach their voices."

Howdy, y'all! The Land Acquestion Architect's grunt, stripped of the filters. 
 

Of course, there are some Suits out there where there isn't as much emphasis on the vocal performance as there is on the sounds required to make the character live. 

"Typically animations come first. I've tried to do sounds before animations, and even before concepts, but there's a near-certain chance it ends up not working out.

The audio that inspired the final Duck Shuffler concept, before that concept then inspired the final Duck Shuffler voice. 'Round and 'round we go!

"Of the Suits that have a vocal performance, Firestarter is one of the interesting ones. Getting that "masked" sound was fairly easy: I had an empty glass cup, and I sat for an hour or so speaking into it at various angles. Had to get that good ratio of "echo" to "muffle," which also inspired the idea of having special idle sounds for certain Suits.

Deep Diver and Firestarter Idle loops, currently unused.

"Some Suits aren't even a performance at all. Take Major Player–he has the normal Cog VO that any ol' grunt Cog has, but converted to piano MIDI. His character was always meant to be chaotic and out of place for a Suit, so he got a sillier voice to match. Featuring cymbal hits for extra flavor of course, courtesy of his cymbal hat.

Major Player's murmur, except there's no murmur.

"Pacesetter is similar in this regard–definitely not a serious character by any means, with a not-so-serious vocoder Cog VO to match. I initially had a whole spread of concepts for Crew to choose from."

Some of the alternate Pacesetter concepts.

"There's also Bellringer, who doesn't even have a mouth to speak of. Similarly to Pacesetter, his voice is a result of a vocoder utilizing tubular bells to strange–but interesting–results. That same sound effect is also found in his ability, tying together his ability with his voice as they both originate from his head movements. Finally, the High Roller. The High Roller is easily the wildest encounter we've put out to date, pushing the boundaries of what a battle in Corporate Clash can look and feel like. Many of us felt so inspired by his star-striking glory, he was even graced with some more special voice lines."

Line voiced by former Crew member Cracking A. Joke

Beyond the Voices

Of course, with the development of any Suit comes the development of their battle. Like their voice, sound is used to convey the visuals and even effects of a battle ability. Take the first manager any new Toon may encounter: the Duck Shuffler. He's a simple fella with only one ability to speak of: Wager Management. 

"This sound has a lot of components to it. Going into designing any ability audio, I watch the clip of it in action a dozen or so times. I hear the different elements in my head, and take notes as I go. The big slot switch, the spinning cylinders, the tension as they roll, the slots clicking into place, and finally, the result."

This method is common with any type art: visualizing what the project demands, and planning thoroughly before beginning. But of course, the hardest part can be the execution. As with anything requiring design, the final result may not be anything like the artist had originally imagined for any number of reasons.

"With a plan in place, I set out to get those individual pieces of the entire ability so I could smash them all together. I often mess around with a lot of furniture in my apartment for foley. I'll look around and go, 'oh, yeah this door's deadbolt would be perfect for the slot's latch.' Running my fingers along these window blinds, or on the grates of this heater make the perfect little ticks for the slots, and so on."

With foley, there can be a lot of variance; it's highly dependent on the materials available to the individual sound designer. It's not all about recording foley though – like with Suit voices, part of the job is knowing when, where, and how to edit existing sounds to bend to the needs of any sound effect.

"With Toontown sound design, it's very easy to look at a library like Cartoon Trax and completely overdo it for the sake of Tooniness. I try to be very intentional with my use of non-diegetic sounds, or sounds not produced in-universe by the actions of a character. An example of this is the rolling snare in the Wager Management ability, while the slots roll: there's not actually a snare being played, the snare is meant to exaggerate that bit of tension leading to the results of the slots."

Let's examine another sound effect from a battle, one that uses less foley: Deadwood.

You're fired.

"I consider this sound effect, even though it doesn't ever play for those who understand the Chainsaw Consultant fight, integral to the identity of this encounter."

As those on the Game Design team have discussed in prior backstages, the development of the Chainsaw Consultant's encounter was a long and arduous process. Some may even recall and speak of the infamous 6-hour-long Game Design meeting on that fateful Saturday night in August of 2022. During its development, we considered it the most brutal that Corporate Clash had to offer, with a group-wipe condition to match.

"Whenever this condition was met, it was over. The music cut, with the Toons ejected into the lobby, Chip's animation invoking an angry boss snapping his finger to the door as you're stuffed into a cannon and fired. It had to be dramatic."

And so, the sound includes a variety of samples to reflect this emotion: the winding up in the engine as the animation builds, the rev of the chainsaw as he throws up his hands, and finally, a wooden slam and deep bell to sound off the end of the fight. Everything stops, and the cannons rise up to see the Toons out.

The Toonier Side

However, Suits aren't the only ones that get to have their world built up through audio! Let's take a look at how the Toons fought back, starting with the Zap track. It was known for a while that the old Zap gags were all-around not that great. The animations were quite lengthy, the sounds had grown lackluster compared to the development in other areas of the Crew.

The Hires & Heroes update was a prime time for a lot of Crew to find their footing in their respective crafts, and the sound designers were no different. As stated above, sound was often the first to fall to the wayside in the development of an update due to a lack of collective team knowledge, and a lack of resources.

"It was pretty early on in my tenure that I started seeking out work, outside of what I was putting into Suit voices. Because the team didn't know much about me at the time, and I didn't know how much the team wanted to invest into audio work, I just asked about work I'd like to see done. For the Toony side of things, Zap was on the top of my priority list. This was agreed on quickly, as the Creative team was invested in new types of sound work."

"It started with the ones folks didn't really like, such as Carpet and Balloon, but this quickly expended into the entire track. We even had a special someone who had watched the 1.3 Partner QA create a storyboard for a Stagelight Zap gag."

Now-Crew member Toona's Stagelight storyboard.

"The Crew went wild over that concept, and it was pulled together within a week or two after we had gotten permission from the person who made it. I will say, although I cranked out that sound very quickly, it was fun to work on! Shortly after, Toona found their way onto the Crew and has been making animations since. If you're someone who's a little shy like I was, or you don't think you'd get in like I thought when I first applied, here's your sign to go for it. As is posted on the walls of many public school classrooms, you miss 100% of shots you don't take. It's always incredible seeing the talent this community possesses, and how we inspire each other to create great things."

Stronger Together

Of course, like with any Creative endeavor, the final product is best when those working on it share a unified vision. For an example, look no further than the GUMBALL Machine. 

The G.U.M.B.A.L.L. Machine began conceptually as a daily currency shop: you do activities once a day, you get a special currency for it, and you can buy special things. In the beginning, it wasn't a gumball machine at all: rather a stand like the Restoration Station. Over time, this concept eventually morphed into the Seussian tangle of pipes and silly feat of engineering we have now, with accompanying animations and all! And where there are animations, there's audio to follow.

"At the time, Loonatic was working on some tricks (Loonatricks, if you will), like proximity zones where audio would fade in and out as you stepped into a range of an object. One of the first use cases of this was for none other than the G.U.M.B.A.L.L. Machine. At the time, the machine was supposed to activate as you approached, so it does have unused audio: powering on, and dispensing items."

SFX for the unused activation and redemption animations.

"The idling loop especially takes a lot of inspiration from the portrait machine from the original Luigi's Mansion, setting a rhythm that makes the sound almost musical. Another on the Crew caught this, and wanted to take a step further."

Unfinished took to the G.U.M.B.A.L.L. Machine sound effects quickly, and produced a conceptual theme utilizing the audio zones: a track that would fade in alongside the SFX, and utilize the SFX as part of its percussion. 

"I consider that funky machine one of the most cohesively-Toony objects we've ever put into the game. Everything meshes so well, the fact that it's a gumball machine as a shop, the sweeteners that give you currency gumballs, the prizes being the little orb capsules, the clattering of the machine that works to the music. Just being near it and using it feels wholly satisfying, like 'yeah, that thing belongs in Toontown.' Like how your mind's eye sees frogs sitting on lily pads, or dogs always fetching bones."

Conclusion

And that brings us to the end of this edition of Backstage: Corporate Clash. We hope you enjoyed this look into the oft-unseen world of Corporate Clash audio development, and we are always appreciative of the community's support! Thank YOU, as always, for making all of this possible. We hope you'll stay Tooned to what we have in store!