Ren'Py Completed Star Channel 34 [Season 1 - Ep. 12] [Akabur]

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jahall

Well-Known Member
Feb 20, 2019
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The good news is that in Akabur's latest weekly Patron post he says he's feeling a good deal better, though still not 100%, and has been able to resume work on the game. So I guess that "OnHold" tag next to the thread title could now be removed.
 

Bruce_Wayne18

Member
Mar 14, 2018
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He posted some actual progress: I'm guessing it has something to do with his earnings going down by 63%
 

ukaking

Newbie
Jun 20, 2020
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He posted some actual progress: I'm guessing it has something to do with his earnings going down by 63%
63% how? as far as i recall i have always seen him swinging between 4k-5k since the past year. is there any other MAIN source of income for him? or was percent a typo where you pressed shift+5 instead of shift+4
 

McSlut

Active Member
Aug 12, 2018
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Witch Trainer. In case you didn't know, recently I uploaded WT to . Shortly after I got a few messages from people saying that they have problems lunching the apk file on their phones. I decided to test it myself, and it launched without a problem. And then... And then I spent an hour playing the game. Revisiting it after so many years felt wild. A whole rush of emotions and memories. It made me remember how much effort I put into swimmingly important things back then: the fire place fire animation, the outside weather effects, the animated chibis. Heh, back then I had plenty of time and health to burn through. Well in any case, revisiting WT made me also think some things, but I don't think it's time to talk about that yet :)
what could this mean? witch trainer 2? witch trainer gold?
 

SenPC

Active Member
Feb 3, 2018
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Comments like this are weird to me. y'know Akabur....has finished projects, right? And he's not even slow to come out with updates, present circumstances excepted. What exactly is your issue with him?
Akabur projects in order of memory off the top of my head:
Cinderella: 2010, flash game, never finished, but showed talent.
Butler's Bitch: 2013, flash game, finished, very short but showed some talent.
Broken Hearts Bordello (with Smersh): over the course of several years, Unfinished, basic and boring. Akabur just fell off the project eventually.
Princess Trainer: 2014-2018, argument could be made that it's still unfinished even though there are endings. He never implemented several promised features.
Witch Trainer: 2014-2019 His masterpiece. Mods to finish/expand the game started appearing in 2015 due to frustration with his pace, several iterations out there in Russian and English. Technically finished as he implemented endings, but he left so many promised or implied features missing that others felt obligated to finish it for him. Best version to date is still someone else's.
Mating Season: 2018, finished, very short.
Iris Quest: 2015-???? (with Dahr and Xalijo) Akabur dropped out of this collaboration early on, project is going nowhere under Xalijo/Dahr's leadership. *Yes, I understand that this was never an Akabur project, but he WAS a part of the team early on when it looked like it might be a professional production and there was a lot of hype, then he dropped out.
Star Channel 34: 2016-???? Installations arrive in fits and spurts whenever he works on it.

So that's his game history. Also, for folks that have been following him since the early days, it's clear he's a talented kid with a lot of ideas running around in his head. We funded his early projects, collectively gave him enough money to go to art school (his stated dream) in Canada, he dropped out. He went back to a Russian art school, dropped out. In both cases he says he ran out of money, but the math wouldn't support that. He was making enough money to pay for a prestigious art school in Canada, which would have paid for ten students at a school in Russia, his earnings at the time were over $12k monthly. What he didn't like about school were the deadlines and required work. He didn't want to put in the hard work to transition from dilettante to professional. His work ethic is shit. That's fine for an amateur, but when you start getting paid like a professional, it's time to act like a professional. So that's my problem with him.
 

cxx

Message Maestro
Nov 14, 2017
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bhb still continues even w/o akabur but updates are even more rare than in sc34.
 
Oct 30, 2019
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Akabur projects in order of memory off the top of my head:
Cinderella: 2010, flash game, never finished, but showed talent.
Butler's Bitch: 2013, flash game, finished, very short but showed some talent.
Broken Hearts Bordello (with Smersh): over the course of several years, Unfinished, basic and boring. Akabur just fell off the project eventually.
Princess Trainer: 2014-2018, argument could be made that it's still unfinished even though there are endings. He never implemented several promised features.
Witch Trainer: 2014-2019 His masterpiece. Mods to finish/expand the game started appearing in 2015 due to frustration with his pace, several iterations out there in Russian and English. Technically finished as he implemented endings, but he left so many promised or implied features missing that others felt obligated to finish it for him. Best version to date is still someone else's.
Mating Season: 2018, finished, very short.
Iris Quest: 2015-???? (with Dahr and Xalijo) Akabur dropped out of this collaboration early on, project is going nowhere under Xalijo/Dahr's leadership. *Yes, I understand that this was never an Akabur project, but he WAS a part of the team early on when it looked like it might be a professional production and there was a lot of hype, then he dropped out.
Star Channel 34: 2016-???? Installations arrive in fits and spurts whenever he works on it.

So that's his game history. Also, for folks that have been following him since the early days, it's clear he's a talented kid with a lot of ideas running around in his head. We funded his early projects, collectively gave him enough money to go to art school (his stated dream) in Canada, he dropped out. He went back to a Russian art school, dropped out. In both cases he says he ran out of money, but the math wouldn't support that. He was making enough money to pay for a prestigious art school in Canada, which would have paid for ten students at a school in Russia, his earnings at the time were over $12k monthly. What he didn't like about school were the deadlines and required work. He didn't want to put in the hard work to transition from dilettante to professional. His work ethic is shit. That's fine for an amateur, but when you start getting paid like a professional, it's time to act like a professional. So that's my problem with him.
Well I appreciate the detailed answer I guess.

I've played both Witch Trainer and Princess Trainer, and they undoubtedly work totally fine as complete works. I don't know how seriously one should take claims that he left out 'promised' features, cause it's not like he took the cash and ran, he moved on to other projects. Which you have to do eventually, can't just polish and improve and add onto one thing for you're entire career, At some point you stop adding new stuff and just wrap it up. Sometimes, the end product does not perfectly resemble the planned goal as it looked every step of the way, He doesn't have an obligation to implement every spitballed idea he ever tossed into a monday post. If I can pinpoint anything actually wrong here, it's that he shouldn't be telling people about planned features before he they start to be implemented. And I think he did actually learn this lesson, he's pretty cagey with upcoming stuff for sc34.

As far as I can tell, there is nothing wrong with his work ethic. Admittedly, I've only been actively following his development cycle since sc34, but the rate of his content production is honestly on the faster end of the scale for the devs in this community. And honestly that's all that needs to be said on the matter! I don't care that Akabur failed his dream to get an art degree. It's sad, I guess. But there's litterally zero direct connection between his dev work and how he chooses to waste his money. He is not betraying his community or his patrons by fucking up his acadamic career, they gave him money because the liked his porn, he made them the porn, that's his money now.

Maybe at some point in the past during Witch Trainer or whatever his rate of output left much to be desired, and one could actually make an argument that he was raking in the patreon cash so he could sleep in and smoke weed and not make his games. But (this present slump excepted) he's clearly been putting in the hours these last couple years at least, his updates are large and come out regularly. Psychoanalyzing him based on his failures in his personal life isn't actually a good way to judge his abilities and standards as a dev.
 

ReaperMania

Member
Aug 8, 2020
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Is the spanking parts swatting April's and Lara's butts when you leave the ship? If so, I vote that, if he ever comes back to this, he has an option of a show where you can pick one of the girls to spank Jasmine, or at least have one where Ashelin gives her one lol
 

LazerShark

Newbie
Mar 5, 2020
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Akabur projects in order of memory off the top of my head:
Cinderella: 2010, flash game, never finished, but showed talent.
Butler's Bitch: 2013, flash game, finished, very short but showed some talent.
Broken Hearts Bordello (with Smersh): over the course of several years, Unfinished, basic and boring. Akabur just fell off the project eventually.
Princess Trainer: 2014-2018, argument could be made that it's still unfinished even though there are endings. He never implemented several promised features.
Witch Trainer: 2014-2019 His masterpiece. Mods to finish/expand the game started appearing in 2015 due to frustration with his pace, several iterations out there in Russian and English. Technically finished as he implemented endings, but he left so many promised or implied features missing that others felt obligated to finish it for him. Best version to date is still someone else's.
Mating Season: 2018, finished, very short.
Iris Quest: 2015-???? (with Dahr and Xalijo) Akabur dropped out of this collaboration early on, project is going nowhere under Xalijo/Dahr's leadership. *Yes, I understand that this was never an Akabur project, but he WAS a part of the team early on when it looked like it might be a professional production and there was a lot of hype, then he dropped out.
Star Channel 34: 2016-???? Installations arrive in fits and spurts whenever he works on it.
I'm pretty sure Princess Trainer and Witch Trainer were finished way before 2018 and 2019, and I'm almost sure Witch Trainer started development after Princess Trainer (not gold) was finished. Don't know where you got those dates.
You are also forgetting Magic Shop, which in my opinion is one of his best projects and as important to his "career" as WT and PT. It's when I started following him and it still has a decent amount of content despite the gameplay, and most importantly, like PT and WT, the art has consistently good quality throughout the whole game, unlike his other games including SC34. Now that I think about it, the way he's developing SC34 in the last few episodes, I think that kind of content would be better suited for Magic Shop. It would probably be easier and less stressful for him (as he wouldn't have to worry about the plot and character interactions and other shit), and it wouldn't turn SC34 into the inconsistent mess it is today.

PS: Oh yeah, I also agree with you, he has no work ethic and as he gets older (and gets more health problems), he distances himself even more from his golden days. He has missed his best opportunity to grow back when he had the time, the money, and the drive to create new projects, and as much as he tries to convince us and himself otherwise, those days are never coming back.
 
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3.80 star(s) 60 Votes