5.1SpongeBob's Crazy Carnival
THE PROJECT
SpongeBob's Crazy Carnival is a $6m theme park attraction at Circus Circus in Las Vegas. As a permanent installation for paying customers, it had to be extremely robust and function perfectly within the hardware infrastructure.
Users are guided around the ride in one of nine carts, each hosting five players. Across seven interactive carnival-style mini-games, users battle their fellow cart riders to top the scoreboard as the story of Plankton's attempt to steal the Krabby Patty recipe unfolds. The experience is built upon a complex hardware system that controls all aspects of the user's physical journey, light-gun interactions, and scoreboard handling.
THE CHALLENGE
Throughout development, we didn't have access to the installation environment or any of the final hardware; until we set foot in Las Vegas during the week-long installation, we couldn’t test in situ.
There are many risks associated with developing software while unable to confirm it will be 100% functional within the live environment; as such, a solid QA and testing framework ensuring all risks are foreseen and mitigated is essential. When testing from our London base, we leveraged debug tools to simulate hardware interaction, allowing us to prepare as much as possible.
THE APPROACH
Using custom debug tools to simulate the live environment as closely as possible, we conducted isolated testing at each milestone to ensure the software met all functional requirements and performed as expected under stress.
At the Beta milestone, we tested builds integrated with the final hardware systems onsite at the Brussels-based vendor workshop, including the light-gun tech; this allowed development to address defects directly related to hardware integration early in production. We also ran a week-long user testing session in our London office to investigate how each game responded to interaction from five real users in myriad scenarios.
THE RESULT
Our stringent QA methodologies resulted in consistent and quality milestone deliveries to the end client, increasing their confidence in the development team's ability throughout the project timeline.
Thanks to the comprehensive functional and integration testing conducted throughout development, we reached the Vegas installation week with minimal bug-fixing to complete. This meant we had time to address specific edge cases, and were able to ensure every detail was perfect. As of August 2024, the ride has been operational 12+ hours per day for 5 months with zero bugs being flagged by the end client.
Agency: Platige / SDR
Type: Theme Park Ride
Year: 2024