The new version of the Unity 3D engine was just released and I’m super excited.

All the previous features continue there: great asset integration (several 3D, 2D, and sound file formats), programming scripts, and a great IDE. But now the visual performance is better, even with the new features enabled.

Pre-baked lightning is now included by default. It allows the creation of amazing scenes that most of the lights pre-rendered. It allows the video card to work on other stuff, like shaders. Speed is also better than the inclusion Ambient occlusion package. It analyses the scene/map previously and checked what parts of it will not appear depending on where the camera is and saves the information to be used in real-time. The performance gain is huge.

The animation manager is also a great plus. It seems very much like video editing, with curves and keyframes. It is now very nice to program animations, especially for designers.

UDK (Unreal Development kit) is also gaining a lot of attention from the media, but with a feature set somewhat similar (again, 99% of the game makers are not even capable of using the engine fully), it is quite an irresponsibility to accept the license that makes you give 25% of the profits to Epic (and after paying your distributor, marketing, etc…).

I just bought a Zenithink ePAD tablet. It’s a generic iPad tablet made in China that runs Android as the OS. Please, consider from now on that it costs less than half of the price of the original.

I must say that despite the whole “generic” label, its quite a nice piece of machine. It has a 10 inches screen with resistive touch sensor, which is great to navigate through internet and reader ebooks and pdf. The processor and memory don’t rival Apple but i don’t feel it is big lack, except, of course, games.

The Android used is the 2.1, which is good one. With Google Market fully enabled, its possible to transform it into a quite comprehensive computer. Zenithink US, the american distributor are releasing often versions of its firmware, so its possible that 2.2 “Froyo"or even 2.3 “Gingerbread”.

The only two things that I was disappointed (which I should not be because I knew about them before buying) are the short battery life (4 hours if WiFi is off) and the ridiculous short range of its internal WiFi. If the tablet is not less than 2 meters, it simply not work! It’s better to connect the net cable at this distance! There are several minor things here and there, but hey, as I said at the very beginning: it cost me less than half of the iPad price*. I really believe that tablets are going to be the next world desired toy. Apple is in grand advantage, but this time their advantage for being the first in the market is not to last long. Chinese companies are going to flood the market with generic inexpensive hardware until they acquire experience, scale and courage to face these big guys. This is what takes in trying to create simple and copyable products with a premium status. Apple woke the dragon.

Masterpiece. The crazy style of China Miéville is notorious. He specialized in a science fiction sub-genre called weird fiction, which mixes the real world with some out-of-the-place elements that are common to the characters, somewhat like Lovecraft. Almost all his books are great. But The City and The City is really great.

The story is a noir murder investigation. The main character is the detective Tyador Borlú and the story is first-person point of view. Borlú is a great character, clever but not a Sherlock, and a little sarcastic about his job.

One curious thing is that I “read” the audiobook. In the beginning, I was completely lost because the name of the characters and places: Besźel, Ul Qoma, Tyador Borlú are just unusual.. II had to check the names on the internet to see how they are written. After some time, they become familiar.

{SPOILER ALERT begin}

Its basic concept is fascinating: two cities that occupy the same physical space, at the same time. People that live in one have to “ignore” the existence of the other. “Trespass” is a crime worse than murder. Crazy crazy concept. That is just one element that sticks you to the book.

{SPOILER ALERT end}

As of September 2010, the novel only won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, tied with Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl, the BSFA Award for Best Novel of 2009, as well as the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award and won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

2009 was a great year. I had the opportunity to watch/play/read/listen several great games, films and books. This list is what I could remember.

Games

Most, but not all, I finished

1. Braid – PC
2. Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Wii
3. The Beatles: Rockband – Wii
4. Dawn of Discovery – Wii
5. de Blob – Wii
6. Dragon Age – PC
7. Drakensang: The Dark Eye – PC
8. Machinarium – PC
9. Neverhood – PC
10. Planescape Torment – PC
11. Race Driver: GRID – PC
12. Torchlight – PC
13. The Witcher – PC

Movies

1. 5cm Per Second
2. Akira
3. Amadeus
4. Army of Shadows
5. Citizen Kane
6. Cowboy Bebop
7. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
8. Doctor Zhivago
9. Drag Me to Hell
10. Ghost in The Shell
11. The Hangover
12. Helvetica
13. Home
14. The Hurt Locker
15. Lady Vengeance
16. The Manchurian Candidate
17. Oldboy
18. The Sinning
19. Star Trek
20. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
21. Tokyo Godfathers
22. Up

Books

Some of them I used the audiobook

1. David Allen – Getting Things Done
2. David Allen – Making It All Work
3. Malcolm Gladwell – The Tipping Point
4. Malcolm Gladwell – Blink
5. Malcolm Gladwell – Outliers
6. Peter F. Hamilton – Fallen Dragon
7. Peter F. Hamilton – The Dreaming Void
8. Peter F. Hamilton – The Temporal Void
9. Raymond Kurzweil – The Age of Spiritual Machines
10. Stephen King – The Dark Tower: The Waste Lands
11. Stephen King – The Dark Tower: Wizard and Glass
12. Umberto Eco – Foucault’s Pendulum

And 2010 might be even better.

200 megabytes is the size of the entire game. And yet, probably one of the most surprisingly good games in some time.

Braid tells the story of Tim and his journey to find the princess. It’s a basic platform game, with the controls just like old Mario, except one thing: you can control time. By pressing a button (and further in game, by some other situations) you can turn back time. Even after you died. If the controls are similar to the famous plumber, the game dymaics is completely different. It is a puzzle game.

Braid is an action-puzzle game about manipulating the flow of time. To rescue a princess, the player journeys through a series of worlds; in each world, time behaves differently. The game provides a mind-expanding experience that is filler-free, treating the player’s time as precious.

The puzzles are very well designed and the difficult progression is a state-of-the-art. Considering that it is an one-man work (Jonathan Blow. did it alone, except for the music, which he licensed, and graphics, which he hired a guy for the job), it’s amazingly good.