Demomaker

Demomakers are multimedia authoring programs used in creating real-time rendered non-interactive audiovisual shows known as demos. Demomakers have usually been developed by demoscene groups for their internal use, but many of them are also publicly available with no cost.

Excluding the early notemakers that had been around since the late 1980s, one of the first publicly available demomakers was the 1991 Amiga program DemoMaker by Red Sector and LCC, which also gave name to the whole category of software. Notable modern demotools include .werkkzeug by Farbrausch and Demopaja by Moppi Productions.

The use of demomakers has caused controversy since the very beginning. Demos have usually been regarded as demonstrations of skills, including the programming skills, of their respective groups, and demomakers allow people to create demo-like works with little or no programmer involvement. Even today, although several notable demos have been created with the aid of demomakers, many groups still prefer to use more traditional methods, such as scripting or source code editing, in composing their demos.

Many demosceners prefer to reserve the word demomaker exclusively for the early programs and call the current software demotools. In the broad sense of the word, however, demotools may also include non-demomaker programs such as trackers, specialized graphics editors and executable compressors.

In recent years, some of the modern demo authoring tools have been well received in non-demoscene contexts such as Machinima.

External links

• .werkkzeug download page
• A .werkkzeug fansite including a German translation of the .werkkzeug1 tutorial, download-section and forum.
• Stravagana Demo Editor.
• Moppi Productions' Demopaja.