Steam Early Access is just the right place for that. That made me realize FWsim could grow and evolve to appeal to a wider audience and not just firework experts.

'I discover that they've been using the game for seven or eight years and they still design fireworks.“FWsim started as a tool aimed at professionals and fireworks enthusiasts, but over the course of the years, more and more people got hooked to it and its creative possibilities. 'Often when I exchange emails with users,' he said. But one of the reasons Trötzmüller has been able to build a career out of building tiny, targeted pieces of software like FWSim is because that community becomes like a virtual family. Even on Steam, it's likely to stay that way. 'I want FWSim to be a game where people can express themselves, learn something about themselves, and maybe in some way even grow as a person.' 'I play a lot of games myself, and sometimes when I play a game, I feel like, 'OK, this was just fun, but somehow it didn't really feel in my heart or it didn't feel me happy and satisfied,'' he said. He's never designed a fireworks display that was brought it to life in the real world, nor participated as an assistant on someone else's work.Īnd yet, building and tweaking and upgrading FWSim has continued to bring him joy. Trötzmüller has spent more than a decade crafting a piece of software to simulate fireworks, but it's never gone further than that. That was 14 years ago, and the first 'official' version of FWSim would eventually arrive four years later in 2010. He presented some of his ideas for the proposed software, trying to figure out what people would want, and two months later, he'd published an early version to the forum. He wasn't aware of any software at the time to develop your own fireworks show, so Trötzmüller started writing one from scratch.Īround this time, Trötzmüller was hanging out in some online fireworks forums, where real-life fireworks designers and enthusiasts would hang out and talk shop. Like most teens, Trötzmüller was not a licensed pyrotechnician, but he did have a computer, an interest in computer programming, and free time.

'There are some people out there who can really make fireworks into an art with just amazing designs that just capture the mood of music,' said Trötzmüller in an interview. Already mesmerized by the power of expertly edited audio and video to elicit emotions, Trötzmüller found the addition of fireworks to be profound.

In 2006, Lukas Trötzmüller was a music-obsessed teenager and stumbled into some videos from a fireworks competition in France.

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