Release of "Omission" Delayed
02 July 2018
Many fans and followers of MousePaw Games may have noticed that a promised game release has come and gone without a word. Omission is a new game which has been forthcoming for over a year.
MousePaw Games already released a game trailer for Omission, depicting the proposed final gameplay. Some testers were even able to play the game early. It's obvious the game was done, so what happened?
"I've said for years, packaging in Python is like beating yourself to death with a wet trout," explains Lead Developer Jason C. McDonald. "That's become less true over the years, unless you were using one of those Python libraries that just didn't package well. That's the wall we hit."
Right out of the gate, Omission proved difficult to package and distribute, due to several bugs and odd dependency issues in Kivy, the GUI library it relied on. "We tried everything, from traditional Debian packaging to Snapcraft, tarballs to AppImage. We'd hit a brick wall each time," says McDonald.
Finally, almost a year overdue, and no closer to packaging, MousePaw Games has pulled the plug on releasing Omission 1.0. Development has begun on version 1.1, using Qt 5 via the PySide 2 bindings. The team anticipates new challenges relating to the pre-release toolkit, but hopes to have a completed game before the year is out. "At least Qt has a history of being packaged," McDonald remarked.
Programmers with experience in Python and/or Qt are encouraged to assist with development via our Development Network.
Questions, comments, and concerns may be directed to info@nullmousepawmedia.com.