REDMOND, Wash. - Feb. 25, 2002 - Microsoft Corp. today announced that its "Terrarium" game has been downloaded by more than 8,000 developers just one week after its launch, demonstrating continuing developer enthusiasm for the Microsoft® .NET Platform. "Terrarium" is a peer-to-peer distributed computing game written using the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft's new programming model for developing and running applications and XML Web services. Developer interest in "Terrarium" comes on the heels of Microsoft's launch of the .NET Framework and Visual Studio® .NET earlier this month.
In "Terrarium," developers use code to design herbivores, carnivores or plants and then introduce their creations into a peer-to-peer, networked ecosystem where they compete for survival. "Terrarium" provides a competitive medium for testing software development and strategy skills, as well as proof of concept for many of the technologies incorporated into the .NET Framework.
"'Terrarium' was designed to introduce developers to some of the powerful features of the .NET Framework," said Eric Zinda, a product unit manager in the Developer Tools Group at Microsoft. "These include the role of Windows® Forms and DirectX® in generating a powerful user interface, XML Web services, support for peer-to-peer networking, support for multiple programming languages, and the ability to update smart client, or Windows-based, applications via a remote Web server, among many others."
Users can actively participate in "Terrarium" by developing creatures and placing them in the ecosystem or simply set up the application as a screensaver and watch as other developers' creatures battle for survival. Anyone can develop creatures using the .NET Framework Software Development Kit, available as a free download from MSDN® (connect time charges may apply), or they can use Visual Studio .NET, an integrated development environment for programming on the .NET Framework.
"Terrarium" was initially released in a beta version to Microsoft's industry partners and customers at the company's Professional Developers Conference last October. Since then, more than 17,000 creatures have been developed and submitted.
"Building animals in 'Terrarium' is a great and fun way to learn .NET programming," said Scott Stanfield, CEO of Vertigo Software Inc. "I spent two days tweaking my herbivore to pass on DNA, defend the food and reproduce as fast as possible."
"One of our goals with the .NET Framework was to perform the grungy details of memory management, cross-programming language communication, and error handling behind the scenes," said John Montgomery, group product manager for the .NET Framework at Microsoft. "We wanted to take the burden off the developers so they can focus on implementing the application logic and not become mired in peripheral details. We wanted to make programming fun again. Judging by the success of the beta release, we've succeeded."
More information on "Terrarium" is available at http://www.gotdotnet.com/terrarium/. The game can also be downloaded from that site.
About the .NET Framework
The .NET Framework is Microsoft's new programming model that unites more than 20 programming languages and brings about dramatic improvements in areas such as developer productivity, deployment, security, memory management, error handling, performance and scalability. In addition to dramatically simplifying the programming "plumbing" that developers must deal with today, the .NET Framework makes it easy to turn applications into reusable, interoperable XML Web services.
More information on the .NET Framework is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/.
About Visual Studio .NET
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET is the rapid application development (RAD) tool for building next-generation applications and XML Web services. Visual Studio .NET empowers developers to design broad-reach applications for any device and any platform. Visual Studio .NET is fully integrated with the .NET Framework, providing support for multiple programming languages and automatically handling many common programming tasks, freeing developers to rapidly create desktop or Web applications using the programming language of their choice. Visual Studio .NET includes a single integrated development environment (IDE) with RAD features for building applications and middle-tier business logic, and RAD XML designers for working with data. More information about Visual Studio .NET can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software -
any time, any place and on any device.
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