Reasons for choosing Quake II (Score 2, Informative)

The main reason for choosing Quake 2 was the GPL'd source code. I would like to add code to model reaction rate kinetics, flow rates, phase equilibria, etc. With a proprietary game like Unreal or even the Quake III engine, this is not possible without licensing the software, which is big bucks. Chemical Engineering teaching labs are expensive to build and maintain, and as students, a trip to the plant is strictly look and don't touch for obvious reasons. Adding the danger of getting killed by falling on a turning motor shaft, or by opening the wrong valve and causing an explosion could provide valuable and cheap safety lessons as well. The real benefit from a plantwide process control perspective is to allow a disruption in a control variable like a feed rate, pressure or temperature to propagate through the system and then let the students "tune the controller" to help fix the problem. This is currently learned using Matlab, Simulink, or MS Excel. I had envisioned entering process control adjustments in the console in Quake 2, trading the weapons for tools such as a wrench, pressure tester, thermometer, flow meter and even a laser pointer for multi-player presentations and making the act of learning real world troubleshooting more realistic.