Educational models in the Quake gaming engine

Student: Eric Mindek, Department of Design

Faculty:
Wayne Carlson, Advisor, Department of Design
Jeff Haase, Assistant Professor, Department of Design
H.G. Parsa, Associate Professor, Hospitality Management

Eric Mindek created a fully interactive real-time virtual space of the Drake Union’s View Point Bistro restaurant in the Quake game engine using QeRadiant as the building tool.

Watch the Restaurant Movie (26.8 MB QT)

Project: Video Games have long been associated with the demise of the creativity in children and the sole cause for the United States epidemic of obesity with its children. While this Thesis project is not to confirm nor deny those reports, rather it is to explore alternative uses of the game engine in order to allow the game engine to be viewed as a healthy object of society able to produce beneficial educational teachings.

The project was based on work completed by Interior Design Graduate, Jen Kubik, for her senior thesis project, the redesign of the Drake Union’s View Point Bistro restaurant. Jen’s thesis proposed a redesign of the restaurant including new furniture, carpet, lighting patterns, employee workflow, way finding, and moveable partitions for privacy. Eric was able to create the realistic representation of the design she developed, in the Quake game engine using QeRadiant as the building tool. The space is as true as possible by the researcher getting measurements from the existing brick and mortar building as well texture samples. Once the virtual model was made, it was then possible to examine what educational aspects the worker’s of the restaurant could gain.

Having a fully interactive real-time virtual space offers many possibilities that have gone unexplored in both the gaming and the academic communities. It was Eric's idea to utilize what the game already offers, or is able to offer with a little modification and programming know how, to utilize the game engine in an exciting new way. Food management is always striving to create a better experience for their customers, which is their primary goal. This is accomplished through better training of its staff. It became a logical connection then that it would be possible to train the staff virtually, by giving them tasks to accomplish.

The Quake GUI is very simple in it’s display. It offers the player to view life, weapons they’ve picked up, and the amount of ammo they have left for a particular weapon. Id Software, the makers of the Quake gaming series, have been very liberal in releasing source code making it almost completely modifiable to suit the designer’s needs. Everything from game type to characters to the GUI can be changed from what the game ships with. With some programming knowledge it would then be possible to substitute the amount of ammo left with another display depending on what task the employee was trying to accomplish. For example, one task may be to have the employee collect as many plates off of a table in a given time and return them to the washbasin area. The ‘ammo’ counter could keep a tally of this. A task such as this has valuable educational benefits including utilizing one’s time efficiently, way finding, and setting and achieving goals.

Much work still needs to be done on this project in order to achieve all goals. Modifying the game code is one major hurdle yet to be undertaken, but when commenced should be completed in a timely matter. Other topics have been brought up as possible uses in other areas that have yet to go explored. Theoretically the same setup could be used in Industrial Systems Engineering for viewing paths that machined parts have to go through in order to reach their destination in the plant, and optimizing their time in each area. Topics such as these could be the basis for future grants, areas of study, or Thesis projects.

For more information email the researcher's at Mindek.1@osu.edu.