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Now, through experience, I have noticed that most KiSS Walk-Throughs, while very informative and precise, assume that the reader must have some experience with writing code. Unfortunately, that is usually not the case, as some people interested in making KiSS dolls have strictly artistic leanings (like me). This has inspired yours truly to explain, in Plain English, how to make a KiSS doll on a Windows 3.1 computer.
I. What You Need
II. Getting Started
III. Making Cels and Palettes
IV. Writing Code AKA The Hard Part
V. Coding Extras
VI. Making the .LZH file
VII. Some Words on FKiSS
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-A computer with Windows 3.1 (Duh.)
-A drawing program that saves to Bitmap (.BMP) format (Paintbrush works just fine)
-A word processing program that doesn't allow you to change the font (Here, Notepad works.)
-A KiSS viewing program (Available on Dov Sherman's Big KiSS Page)
-WSVC Cel Making Program-"wsvc011a.lzh" (Also available on Dov Sherman's Big KiSS Page)
-Tiny LHA (Included with LHA.DLL from The BKP)
-A brain(This always helps)
First off, go into File Manager, go under File, go to Create Directory, and name the new directory "celspals" or something. This directory will be used to put your cel and palette files in. It's just a convienence, but it makes things go a little smoother.
Load up Paintbrush and draw a base doll, or steal one from someone else (but give that person credit, or else people get pissed off.) The official Dov Sherman KiSS walk-through says to figure out how to break the doll up into layers, but that's really sort of difficult to explain in Plain English. So for now we'll skip that and draw its clothes, too. That wasn't so hard was it? ^_^
Now, using the Square tool and any color besides black (I use the default lime green color), CAREFULLY draw rectangles around EVERY ITEM THAT YOU DREW.
DO NOT LEAVE ANYTHING OUT OF A RECTANGLE!! Otherwise WSVC won't work.
Once that's done, load up WSVC.
By now you have loaded up your picture into WSVC. If you get the error message
"Error in 375,289" or something like that at the top of the screen, something's wrong. That means you still have an item, or even just a pixel, that's not inside a rectangle. If that's the case, go back into the paint program and erase the stray pixel or pixels or put that item inside a rectangle, then load it back into WSVC.
Now you are staring at your bitmap with a bunch of little gray boxes and funky
letter/number combinations in the bottom corners of the rectangles you drew. One of the rectangles should be outlined with a dotted line. Double click the little gray box. Now you have a little message box with number/letter of the picture, a preview of the cel file, and a list of directories (A:\ , B:\ , etc.) Change the directory to the one you have designated for your cels and palettes. (You should only have to do this once.) Now go up into the text box and change the name of the cel file to one that you want. Push Ok. Next, another text box bearing some strange writing and the words MAKE CEL FILE appears. Push Ok. Repeat those steps for every cel file.This isn't hard, just tedious.
Ok, now comes the part that's hardest to explain. In order to understand how KiSS works, you have to think of a traditional paper doll. (Remember those?) The doll was on the very bottom, and the clothes fit on top of that. Same deal with KiSS The base doll is the very last cel, and the clothes fit in successtion on top of it.
Say you made a base doll ("doll.cel") and a few items of clothing for it ("shirt.cel", "pants.cel", and "shoes.cel"). Of course you have the .KCF, or palette, file ("palette.kcf"). Load up Notepad and start the file out like this:
;Name of Doll
;by Your Name
(600,600)
%palette.kcf
;Cels
#0 shirt.cel
#1 pants.cel
#2 shoes.cel
#3 doll.cel
That's it. Save your file with whatever name you like, but be sure to edit the .TXT extention to read .CNF. This is your CNF or configuration file, and without it, you've just done all that work for nothing. If you do forget to change the extention, that's OK, just go into File Manager, highlight your CNF file, go under File, choose Rename, and change the extention there.
Now, load up your KiSS viewer, and open up your CNF. All the cels should be up in the right hand corner of your set, in all nine sets. Arrange them however you like in Set 0. Now, go up under Option, and choose Arrange Object. This function makes all the sets (the 1-9 buttons) look the same. I assume you've drawn a lot more than just one outfit, so you can change the clothing for each one. When that's done, click on the disk icon, or choose Save from the File menu. A text box with some jumbled wrtiting (it's a Japanese program...) and OK and Cancel buttons should appear. Click on OK, close the veiwer, then go back to Notepad and open up your CNF again.
Here's where things get messy. Look at the jumbled letters and numbers and try not to cry. You have to scroll through and decide what needs to be locked down.
To lock an object down find the # number and type .9999 after it. This makes the object unmovable unless someone is actually willing to click on it 9999 times.BE SURE TO INCLUDE THE DECIMAL POINT! Otherwise this doesn't work and your code is all screwed up.
To semi-lock an object, find the # number and type a smaller number like .5 or .10 or .15 after it. This makes the object moveable after 5, 10, or 15 clicks.
HANDS
Now, we've all seen those KiSS dolls with the hands that hold things, and that's a fairly easy one to code. Just copy the doll's hand, and edit out the parts that will be hidden by whatever object it holds.
EXAMPLE #1 :Let's say you've drawn a doll with a cupped hand, and you want her to be able to hold a wine glass or a book or something. Copy the hand, and edit out everything but the cupped fingers. This will be a separate cel of its own. Create the cels, palettes, and code as usual. Now, while you're coding make sure to number the cels with the fingers on top of the doll, and the objects you want her to hold in between the doll and the fingers. Lock the body and fingers but not the other stuff.
EXAMPLE #2 :Let's say you've drawn a doll with her hand in fist, and you want her to be able to hold something like a wand or a sword. Copy the hand, and edit out everything but the fingers, knuckles and the curl of the hand. This will be a separate cel of its own. Create the cels, palettes, and code as usual. Now, while you're coding make sure to number the cels with the fingers on top of the doll, and the objects you want her to hold in between the doll and the fingers. Lock the body and fingers but not the other stuff.
EXAMPLE #3: This one's a little more difficult. Let's say you drew the doll with her hand on her hip. Instead of drawing the clothing around the hand, copy the hand and place it somewhere else in your drawing. Draw the clothing as normal without including the hand. (Unless you're drawing gloves or something...) Now, go back to the edited out hand and erase everything that doesn't touch the doll's hip or leg. Make this a separate cel. Create the cels and palettes as usual. When you code, make sure the hand is one of the uppermost cels, above the pants, shirts, etc.
BACKS OF CLOTHING
Strictly an arbitrary and asthetic thing, but sometimes it's fun to see an article of clothing with a tag in the back or whatever. This is not something I recommend for beginning KiSSers, because it's extremely time consuming and more often than not, extremely frustrating.
But here's how you do it:
EXAMPLE: Assuming you used the following pattern: a base doll ("doll.cel") and a few items of clothing for it ("shirt.cel", "pants.cel", and "shoes.cel"), you should take the clothing items and copy and paste them. Using the copies as bases, draw in the backs of the clothing and shoes, in other words, the parts that won't show when they're placed on the doll. When you draw the rectangles around them, the articles of clothing with backs should have THE EXACT SAME SIZED RECTANGLE AS THE ONE WITHOUT. This is so when you create the cel files the cels will match up. The best way to do this is to draw the rectangle on the peice BEFORE you draw the peice with the back, then copy and paste the whole square.
While creating the cels be sure to name the clothes with backs on them something like "shirtbak.cel" and "shoeback.cel", so you remember what cels are what. Also, be sure to make the peices that have backs (and the backs) are OFFSET. This is so they match up when you load them into the viewer.Create palette as usual.
When you code, note the number of the front cels.
If you're CNF looked like this without the backs:
;Cels
#0 shirt.cel
#1 pants.cel
#2 shoes.cel
#3 doll.cel
It should look something like this with the extra cels:
;Cels
#0 shirt.cel
#1 pants.cel
#2 shoes.cel
#3 doll.cel
#1 shirtbak.cel
#2 pantback.cel
#3 shoeback.cel
MAKING A README FILE
This is one of the easiest things to code, since you don't have to code it at all. ^_^ Just load up Notepad, write your Read Me file, save it as README.TXT, and save it to the directory where all your files are.
Okay, by now you've got your all your cels, palette, and CNF ready to be made into a finished doll. To do this, find where you put Tiny LHA, and double click the icon. The icon should reappear at the bottom of your screen, as if minimized. Leave it alone, it's supposed to do that.
Now, go into File Manager and find the directory where you've stuck all the components of your doll. Highlight all of them. Resize File Manager so that the icon for Tiny LHA (I believe it's a snowman or something) is visible. Drag and drop your highlighted stuff onto the icon. Your HD will churn for a second, and a little window with a text bar will pop up. This is where you name the .LZH file. The default name is the first cel in your directory list, so unless you want the file to be named Shirt, I suggest you delete the text in the box and give the doll a name. After you type in the name, click OK. A little Yin-Yang icon will swirl around for a while and then stop. If you check the directory you'll notice that your doll file (eg. "doll.lzh") will be there. Delete all the cels, the palette, and the .cnf file, and readme (if you made one...) you don't need them anymore. All of that is inside the .LZH (it's a lot like a ZIP file.) and the KiSS veiwer will read it as a doll.
There now, you're all done. Aren't you proud of yourself. You have your very own KiSS doll, albeit simple, but it IS your creation. Go post it on the Big KiSS Page, O newbie creator of dolls. ^_^
-Who it's from (your name)
-Who it is (The doll's name and show, or the words Original Character)
-The Content (if it's an "adult" doll)
Don't even try it. It's very hard for me to explain it in Plain English, and even I still haven't figured out everything about it. Your best bet is to go ahead and draw the animation cels, then elist someone at the Nakama KiSS Group or on any one of the Yahoo! KiSS clubs. There are all kinds of people there with coding savvy way beyond that of mere KiSS coders. And plus they're all generally nice people who would be happy to help you out with FKiSS and could probably even TEACH you how to do it. O_o
