Audio Interface

Probably the least impressive part of the XioSynth triumverate is the audio interface. A simple 2 in 2 out setup, the ports on the back of the keyboard offer a pair of line out jacks, a headphone socket, MIDI Out and an XLR and jack line in, each feeding a different channel.

The XLR can supply phantom power, switchable from the Global menu on the synth between 12, 24, and 48 volts, in case you’re running off a laptop battery and want to save a bit of power – though the unit comes with a power adaptor, and can take batteries itself if need be. The menu is accessed through a 2 line LCD, and between that and an option on the front panel various audio options can be accessed, such as levels, monitor mixing and so on. I was glad to find the headphone and line levels had dedicated knobs.

The headphone port allows for direct monitoring (so little latency) of both inputs and the synth output itself, though the synth is pumped over the same 2 channels as the two inputs, so you can’t, say, record a mic, guitar and the synth all on seperate channels. However, the audio interface seems clean and pleasant, and the mic pre unobtrusive.

Midi Controller

The XioSynth (I have the 25 key model, though it’s also available as a 49) is also a fairly well equipped MIDI controller. The keys are full size and semi-weighted, with a nice responsive action, though the first unit I received had a sticky key, and I do have concerns about how springy the keys will be after a few months of use. To the left of the keyboard the XioSynth has an XY touch (or fairly-firmly-press) pad, which default to controlling the filters in a fairly entertaining way, and a joystick that controls pitch bend and modulation, though it is somewhat difficult to change one without the other if both are enabled.

Above that are 11 buttons and knobs, all of which can be used to send MIDI data, as well as a few controls that just affect the unit. The synth comes pre-loaded with presets for some common soft synths and software, with more available to upload. I mostly used them with Reason, for which the mappings seemed adequate, though they can be changed as required using the template editor, which also doubles as a simple patch librarian for the synth (though not as a patch editor). One thing worth pointing out is that the unit lacks MIDI in and Thru ports, which might be of concern, depending on your setup.

Synth

The synth is a three oscillator (with 17 waveforms), two LFO, one filter synth, which has been put to (mostly) good use by the 200 preset patches, with various notables contributing some sounds, including a couple of really nice bass sounds from roots manuva. The synth is 8 note polyphonic, though many of the patches are monophonic, and can be fed through a series of on board effects, with basic reverb, delays and distortion and so on all present and correct. The built in patches demonstrate a good sample of the possibilities of the synth, with big bass sounds, trance-y pads and plenty of fluid lead lines that respond in a nicely musical way to the various controls.

When the XioSynth is switched into synth mode, the eleven knobs and buttons control the parameters of the various parts of the engine. Due to the limited number of controls (as compared to the range of editable parameters), there are quite a few mode switches available. A button at the start of the control panel flips the controls between two different modes (as well as flipping them into input mode which allows adjustment of the gain and pan on the audio inputs at the back), for example flipping a knob between key tracking and frequency on an LFO.

On the oscilator and LFO sections, another button allows you to flip through which oscillator the knobs affect, which can make editing a patch a little less spontanous than one may want. However, given that parameters can be assigned to the XY pad and joystick, it doesn’t take long to come up with something interesting.

Also usefully, the synth can be used stand alone, when powered off batteries or the power adaptor.

Other Features

One of the funkiest features is the hybrid mode, where some controls can be mapped to midi, and others mapped to the synth. This allows, for example, having the touch pad and keyboard control the synth, while the pots and joystick only send midi, which should make for some interesting possibilities when, say, jamming with Ableton – though I must admit that so far I haven’t actually needed it. The synth can transmit midi even when purely in synth mode, which can be quite handy for recording the midi for tweaking, before playing the improved version back to the XioSynth to record the audio output.

Tweaking synth sounds is fairly fluid, which is of course much of the point of having a hardware synth, despite the multiple modes utilised on each button. Each knob only reacts to changes once you’ve passed through it’s current value, so if a filter is set half way, and the knob is at 0, moving it wont immediately result in the filter snapping closed. Speaking of creating sounds, saving your creations does involve overwriting an existing one, and while the patch librarian lets you save and restore them, so that you needn’t lose them forever, it would be nice to have a space to store them while still keeping the presets around for inspiration.

The synth also features an arpeggiator with a solid range of options, and a step-sequencer style slicing tool they call the X-Gator. You can edit the level of each step (16 or 32) on the LCD, and get some good rhythmic effects going pretty quickly. The tempos of the effects, X-Gator and arpeggiator are all editable, and can sync to the midi clock.

Summing Up

Considering the price point of the XioSynth, it really is great value for money. You get a reasonable audio interface, a good midi controller and a big brash synth all thrown in, and there really is little to compare it to, other than Novation’s older X-Station.

In synth terms, there isn’t much you get for this kind of money. The microKorg and Alesis Micron spring to mind, both of which cost at least £20 more and have their own limitations, though the Alesis at least has more powerful synthesis, though even less controls if I recall correctly.

As for the combined audio interface/midi controller aspect there is some competition, M-Audio’s Ozonic is in slightly more expensive than the Xiosynth, but is 4 in 4 out, and has a few more control options. It is firewire though, while the XioSynth is USB2, and firewire does seem to be overlooked in the cheapy brands of laptops your author favours. The Alesis Photon is in a similar bracket MIDI and audio feature wise and seems to be a few quid over the £100 mark.

All in all, the XioSynth is a sort of half way house between a computer based system and a workstation synth, which is pretty much exactly what I was looking for. However, despite the fact is is undeniably cracking value for money, I think it’s worth considering whether you actually need what the XioSynth is giving you.

If you’re likely to want to record more than one source on a regular basis, on need a number of outs, you would probably be served by a beefier audio interface. For those looking to play their synth live, the XioSynth would work for the occasional bleepy bit, but it might be worth investing in a slightly tougher stand alone unit for regular gigging – perhaps an SH-201, Juno or similar. Similarly, many of the features really come out when the unit is used with a computer, which might not be the most reliable live set-up. For those working in the studio and looking for some new sounds, you might be better suited to a decent controller and a soft synth.

Overall though, the XioSynth is an incredibly versatile package, and the fact that you can chuck it in a rucksack with a laptop/DAW and a mic and have a pretty complete portable studio is very attractive.

Who doesn’t like coffee? Based on a quick, informal survey of the people around me: No one. I’m sure the dreams of many of the coffee craving population include running a hip coffee shop of their own, where kooky people could sit around, drink coffee and talk about their lives. Luckily for us, we can all live the dream thanks to Coffee Tycoon, but will it turn into a popular classic, like Friends, or a horrible nightmare, like Becker?

After persuading the game to run (almost) in a window by alt tabbing, I quickly grew to love the lack of a menu option to turn off the jazz music that infested the opening screens. Inspired by the uplifting sounds, I decided to name my caffeine emporium the “Pit of Despair”, and choose a “wacky” style for the new shop’s fittings. The last step was to choose a location from a range of US cities, including NY, Miami, and of course Seattle. I plumped for Miami, just on the off chance someone would mug the jazz band on their way there.

As an intelligent and experienced gamer, I decided to skip the tutorial and jump straight in. Because Anarchy Entertainment, the developer, clearly hate humanity there was still no way to turn off the god-awful music, and I noticed that you can only save one game at a time. There’s no autosave, but considering you only get to store the one game that might be something more of a blessing.

So, I’d got a shiny new store, and I needed to spend some money! Unfortunately, I only started with $100, which would just about allow me to buy in some decaf from the menu section. There were upgrades hiding in another tab but I couldn’t even afford to look at them, let alone buy them. I went with the default staff selection, a mix of mostly baristas, with 15% managers, and 5% executives.

The day started, as would many after it, with me looking into to my not very busy shop. The ironic events department informed me that the customers were satisfied due to the “soothing music”. I managed to spend $5 and make $5, leaving me with a net profit of… nothing! I decided to fire the management. The next day, I went $4 into profit, and the day after $5! This was working, and soon I’d be able to afford a cup of coffee in my own shop.

Unfortunately, the profits leveled out, and I noticed that despite my having fired them the manager and executive still seemed to be hanging around at the back of the store. To reach the next level on the ladder of corporate coffee success I needed to reach the lofty goal of 25 customers, of which I was seven short so I decided to fire all the baristas. By the end of the day I’d lost $10, taking me down to a dollar below my starting cash, but I was at 23 customers. I gave the managers another day and they blasted the target, earning me a $50 bonus and five new customers. The next target was 50 customers, but I was losing money per day. I decided to hire some baristas back, as like the managers before them they’d simply hung around despite the lack of pay. I noticed the executive had not left either, presumably because he had no where else to go since his wife left him due to his slow descent into drink, drugs and gold faucets in bathrooms (they seem to get through them). On the plus side the jazz music suddenly stopped for no apparent reason.

I tried hiring more baristas, in an effort to actually sell some coffee, but the general tide of the business was towards a loss. However, I was making money overall thanks to the random events that popped up throughout each day. Once I hit level 3, I was rewarded with yet more money and customers. Clearly what I needed was more stores, so I rehired my unshaven bum of an executive, and put him to work on expanding my empire. I also fired downsized some more baristas.

By this point, I had come to be fully aware of the utter pointlessness of the in game screen. Unlike, say, Lemonade Tycoon there is no way to skip a day, so you have to let each one run its course, and there’s no real information that you can use to steer your upgrades choices . Though different customers did appear as your empire grew it had approximately no impact on anything, except slowing down the game. The random events were, well, random, and they didn’t appear to be related to anything actually going on in my coffee corporation.

To illustrate, just before reaching the 100 customers mark I was informed that “a new company jet hurts profits”. Right, so I have $300, 2 stores, and a company jet that hurts profits to the lofty tune of $15. Obviously company jet should read “that homeless guy” and hurts company profits should read “looked like he could use a meal”.

Anyway, by this point I had enough in the bank to upgrade my coffeeteria, so I nipped into the upgrades screen. For a mere $500 I could give my employees a wide ranging set of benefits, when I wasn’t firing them all, netting me an extra 3 customers a day, thanks, presumably, to karma. Can’t say fairer than that.

I also noticed that the events started including interesting coffee facts, such as “In greece and turkey the oldest person is almost always served their coffee first”. I have no idea if this is true, but it did seem to turn up on an awful lot of lists of “interesting coffee facts” lists on google.

Out of boredom I experimented in only having executives for a while. This seemed to work, though I quickly went into debt, paying out money I didn’t have. Luckily, I noticed that this debt was not stored anywhere, so when I did make money, I never had to pay any back, clearly just screwing my employees and suppliers. Karmically, my accountant embezzeled $5. I let him off. The next day he embezzeled $20.

Most of the following days were a blur of clicking “End Day”, “Start Day”, “End Day”, “Start Day” until I approached a trance like state of clicking (while playing the same Plaid song again and again and again). After realising I was generating enough customers through the random events and the free daily extras from new menu items I pretty much gave up on the management. Unfortunately they started a union, losing me also twenty customers. Because unions do that. Ahem.

Luckily, the random events kept me interested, with off the wall combinations such as “Hot weather slows sales today” immediately followed by “Cold weather boosts sales today!”. That wacky Miami weather. I also got a warning that “my company was going broke”, a warning that was strangely lacking when it did, in fact, go broke.

At around level 10, the stupidity kicked in with a vengeance. I made enough to perform a corporate take over that gave me 250 new stores. Every day. This meant I never had to worry about dealing with stores ever again, and they became irrelevant to my future dealings. Of course, I still got messages saying “You don’t have enough stores, get to work” or “You need to expand, build more stores!”, but lets not let that get in the way of my masterplan. I had purchased pretty much every upgrade and menu item I could at that level, bar the public stock offering, which nets you ten times your current cash. While I did have over 4000 stores, I decided to wait till my customer base was a bit larger before IPOing.

It also became clear that all the positive and negative random events are scaled to how much money you have, which makes them fluctuate with your success. Whether you’ve got money in the tens of thousands, or the millions, it moves in roughly the same way due to the bonus system, which makes them not only annoying, but discouraging. The happy equilibrium point when you’re making money and gaining customers at a decent rate just doesn’t exist. You can get to a point when you’re doing both, but it’s interminably slow. Some events just don’t make sense, such as executives installing a jacuzzi that causes you to gain several thousand dollars, and some contain errors (right instead of write, and so on). Many of the events are just random snippits from customers, telling you how they will use the coffee to help them lift weights, or that they have a gold cup holder in their car. Since these are repeated so often they fail to add any life or character to the customers, and just clutter up the screen.

The upgrade system is equally pointless. Unlike in most tycoon games where the upgrades play differently, and so must be considered against each other, everything in Coffee Tycoon either gives you extra money, extra customers or extra stores. There is no real diference between employee benefits and a new type of coffee, or newspaper ads and a new espresso machine. On top of that, it really doesn’t take long to get everything you can get on each level, then it’s slogging though the customers until you can reach the next one. The real crime is that not only is it dull, but it’s easy. You can gain customers and money if you’re willing to spend a lot of time clicking the same two buttons, with only the reward of one of the two remaining coffee flavours to keep you going.

The Pit of Despair grew and grew, but the end of the game was a long way away. To finish it you need 1,000,000 customers, which by my estimates would involve playing the game for waaaay too long. I tried so hard to get to the end, but I just didn’t have the mental staminar. I left my coffee empire tired and empty, crushed by the weight of long, boring hours of work that really didn’t achieve anything whatsoever.

Recently, I watched an episode of 24 in which a character was subjected to a kind of torture that involved playing him a series of odd, irregular noises for several hours over headphones. Personally, I think the early stages of Coffee Tycoon works on a similar basis, and would have broken him a lot sooner. Perhaps this is an accurate simulation of the tedious world of coffee franchise ownership, where executives are utterly useless and the customers clich?d, annoying, coffee obsessed freaks, but I still don’t want to play it. This is the kind of product that should never be tested on humans, animals, or even single celled organisms.

• Elsewhere Online

• Grrl Gamer Review

Two games, One Slot

A great many of the independent games released are “inspired” by others. Often these are retro classics, or possibly mainstream console or PC titles, but fairly regularly the original game is an indie itself, as can be seen from the number of Bejeweled-esque games available.

Gamelab’s Diner Dash has a marked similarity to Mystery Studio’s Betty’s Beer Bar, which came out some time before it. Both tell the stories of plucky young women who have decided to follow their hearts by entering the service industry. Betty is a farm girl with dreams of tropical islands, who has decided to work her way there from behind a bar. Diner Dash’s Flo is a refugee from the corporate world, who is doing it for herself by opening a restaurant.

In each of the games, customers arrive and order a drink/meal, which you have to then serve to them. Betty must ensure her clientele have clean glasses full of beer, and the occasional coffee when they get too blitzed, while Flo needs to take orders to the kitchen, serve the food, and bus the tables after the customers have left.

This is all accomplished with the mouse, by clicking on the product (beer, food) and then the customer to serve them. The challenge comes from the rush of customers, and juggling the various resources available (cups for betty, tables for flo), in order to make enough off orders and tips to move up the Ladder Of Success. For the player the bill comes in at $19.95 for each of them, so which one should we be tipping?

Gameplay

The gameplay really is very, very similar. Diner Dash does have a little more depth, with the management of the queue being a big issue. It is much easier to wait on a restaurant full of people who are basically eating at the same time than it is to have people in different stages of the ordering process on different tables, so judging the time taken, and how likely the queuing customers are to leave is essential, since should someone leave you suffer a penalty. Betty’s Beer Bar has a similar issue with the beer glasses, but since the number of customers has a limit by the size of the bar, it doesn’t seem quite as significant as in Diner Dash.

Diner Dash was also significantly less repetitive than Betty’s Beer Bar, which required you to go through the same level multiple times until you earned enough to move to the next bar. When you’ve almost go enough to move it’s very easy to miss your sales goal and get fired because you just want to get through the last tedious shift. Real waiters and waitresses may sympathise.

Graphics

Despite being a the older of the pair, Betty’s probably the better looking. Though it’s true that she does resemble a lonely gentleman’s inflatable companion, Flo is equally damned by looking like a character from the desperately unfunny Nemi cartoon (found in quality free London paper The Metro). However, Betty’s big, cartoony customers have a wealth of detail and character, while Flo’s regulars tend to look exactly the same, differing only by colour and age, with a couple of specials thrown in. Betty’s bar is richer and more detailed than Flo’s various restraunts as well, though the short animation of the cooking chef is an excellent touch. This is not to say that the Diner Dash graphics are bad – the different faces of the customers as they get more annoyed and Flo’s own expressions of boredom or happiness are effective, and add to the game.

Sound

The music at Betty’s place got on my nerves, while the tunes at Flo’s were just dull. I turned them both off, no score draw.

Interface

Betty’s farmgirl roots really show through here, as Diner Dash knocks the stuffing out of Betty’s Beer Bar. The menus throughout Diner Dash are cleaner, slicker and more professional, but that’s a fairly minor point as you’ll spend most of your time in the game. There again though, DD comes out ahead. The hit areas, especially for the customer just above the keg, are too small and easy to miss in BBB, and there is no chaining of clicks. What I mean by this is, if you are holding an empty mug, you click on the keg, then immediately on a customer, the last click overrides the second, and Betty walks up to customer with an empty glass. In Diner Dash, you can click on an order then immediately click on the customer and Flo takes the food, then goes to the customer. This sounds a little odd, but it just means you can play at your pace, and Flo catches up, and it makes a big difference.

Cheque Please

In the end Dinner Dash has a level of polish that isn’t quite there in Betty’s Beer Bar. I found myself returning to Diner Dash, even after hitting a couple of tough levels that took a few attempts to complete. Perhaps this was due to the fact that each level varied slightly, which was something BBB was sorely lacking. Of course, I would recommend trying both demos, but I suspect you’ll be going home with Flo.

(It’s worth noting that Mystery Studio do have another, more recent, game along the same lines called Wild West Wendy, which is purported to have many improvements over Betty’s, and may well be worth a look – though it does list “original country music” as a feature.)