Microsoft Imagine Cup 2005 Winners Announced

Officials from Microsoft have announced the winners of the Imagine Cup 2005 programming competition for students. The final overall winner, an online music collaboration tool from Team OmniMusic, was selected from a pool of almost 17,000 students from more than 90 different countries. However, there was also a game-related element to the competition, and the Visual Gaming Invitational competition was won by Team AI@PUT: Wojciech Jaskowsk and Jakub Gorgolewski from Poznon University of Technology, Poland, who received a cash reward of $8,000 to be shared equally among the team members. In addition, the $5000 Visual Gaming High School competition was won by Team FAL: Shinei Kato, age 15, from Nada High School, Japan. As previously mentioned, the core of the competition is not unlike Artdink's Carnage Heart for the PlayStation: competitors download the Visual Gaming SDK, which contains a game engine, 3D engine, and tools to use for your entry. Entrants don't design the game itself, but instead program instructions for the AI robots in the game to carry out their task of collecting pellets while blasting foes. Atari Corp. founder Nolan Bushnell also addressed festival attendees, commenting on the caliber of student talent: "These students are doing things with software in literally hours and days in what used to take years. This accelerates everything and that's exciting to me." Details of the other Imagine Cup 2005 winners can be found at the Cup’s virtual press room. Imagine Cup 2006 has already been confirmed and will take place in Delhi, India next summer.