Tigger's Little KiSS Page

KiSS programs on this site

!PlayKISS: The original raison d'etre for this site; now with support for FKiSS V3 & V4 features and Cherry (and Cherry hybrid) KiSS. To the best of my knowledge, PlayKISS is the only Cherry KiSS player available for RISC OS.
RISC OS 3.5 or later only. As of version 5.00, it is 26/32-bit neutral. It does not require the 32-bit SharedCLibrary when running on 26-bit versions of RISC OS.
Written and maintained by yours truly.
!AKiss: When this site was first put up, I claimed that !PlayKISS was the first port of KiSS for Acorn hardware. However, that privilege has now been claimed by !AKiss.
RISC OS 3.1 or later.
Written by James Beech & Rory McLean. You can contact James Beech via his website
!RiscKiSS: I believe this to the first RISC OS implementation to support the French KiSS extensions.
RISC OS 3.5 or later.
Written by Dirk Krumbholz

Click here for a comparison of the features of the three viewer programs.

If you are interested in creating your own dolls, you could check out

!KISSTools: Not a viewer, but a simple file conversion utility to allow dolls to be created and edited on RISC OS.
It should work on RISC OS 3.1, but I've only tested it on RISC OS 4.02 & 5.03.
Written and maintained by yours truly.
!MakeKISS: A sophisticated KISS doll creation and editing tool, with most of the functionality of both !PlayKISS and !KISSTools, plus a built-in FKISS debugger.
Written and maintained by yours truly.

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PlayKISS

System Requirements

RISC OS 3.5 or later
!PlayKISS has been tested on RISC OS 4.02 and 5.03; I can see no reason why it shouldn't work on other versions as well.
Acorn Toolbox modules
SparkFS, or a decompression tool that can handle LZH files & (unless you are using RISC OS 4) X-Files or raFS

Click here to download !PlayKISS 5.05 (219K, August 2007).

This version includes support for:

!Virtualise;
French KiSS V4;
KiSS extension sets;
Cherry KiSS (including hybrid sets);
Extended palette sets.
Works under RISC OS 5.

!PlayKISS has been tested on a wide range of KiSS data sets, and has been developed to be as forgiving as possible of mistakes in the configuration file. If you have any trouble, email me, stating the problem and the KiSS set being used (preferably including a WWW address for the KiSS archive).

If you want to be kept up to date with new versions of PlayKISS as they appear, email me and I'll add you to the list of users (which isn't used for any other nefarious purpose, honest, Guv).

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AKiss

System Requirements

RISC OS 3.1 or later
SparkFS, or another decompression utility that can handle LZH archives & (preferably) raFS

Click here to download AKiss (276K).

AKiss appears on this site by kind permission of the authors, James Beech & Rory McLean. This archive includes the AKiss program itself, and a sample KiSS dataset converted into various RISC OS formats for those without SparkFS.

I haven't had a chance to test AKiss exhaustively, so I can't comment on its reliability. If you do have a problem, please don't email me, as I will not be able to help. Instead, try contacting James Beech or Rory McLean.

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RiscKiSS

System Requirements

RISC OS 3.5 or later
SparkFS, or another decompression utility that can handle LZH files & (preferably) X-Files or raFS

Click here to download RiscKiSS (69K).

RiscKiSS appears on this site by kind permission of the author, Dirk Krumbholz.

I haven't had a chance to use RiscKiSS exhaustively, but what testing I have done seems to indicate that is pretty robust. This version fixes an FKiSS bug with the previous version. RiscKiSS still appears to have a slight FKiSS-related bug - cels which are FKiSS-sensitive do not seem to handle the KiSS standard "fix" attribute quite correctly. As for AKiss, I will not be able to help with any problems with RiscKiSS. If you do have a problem, try contacting Dirk Krumbholz.

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Comparison of features offered by the programs

Hardware/software requirements

AKiss
...will run on any Acorn computer running RISC OS 3.1 or later
...supports dolls split over subdirectories
...supports raFS
...doesn't support X-Files
PlayKISS
...requires RiscPC running RISC OS 3.5 or later
...runs on RISC OS 5
...supports dolls split over subdirectories
...supports X-Files and raFS
RiscKiSS
...requires RiscPC running RISC OS 3.5 or later
...supports X-Files and raFS
...doesn't support dolls split over subdirectories
KiSS support

AKiss
...doesn't properly run in the desktop
...doesn't properly handle the KiSS 'fix' attribute
...supports the original KiSS (KiSS/GS rank 1) specification only
PlayKISS
...supports KiSS/GS rank 2, and the draft ranks 3 and 4 specifications
...includes support for KiSS extension sets
...supports FKiSS V2.1, with the exception noted below
...support for FKISS V3 and V4
...supports Cherry KiSS (including the hybrid sub-species)
...supports extended palette sets
RiscKiSS
...supports KiSS/GS rank 2, and the draft ranks 3 and 4 specifications
...supports FKiSS V1.0
Extra features

AKiss
...allows CEL <--> Sprite conversion
PlayKISS
...can save the current picture as a sprite
...can save the cels as a single sprite file
...can alter the palette associated with a particular set
...has a zoom function
...has a very forgiving loader
RiscKiSS
...can save the current picture as a sprite
...can save the cels as a single sprite file
...can alter the palette associated with a particular set
...has a very fast loader

The general conclusion is that AKiss is not as slick as the other two (although the CEL <--> sprite conversion in AKiss is very useful if you wish to build your own sets). If your hardware is up to it then PlayKISS or RiscKiSS is the program of choice, especially as they both support the French KiSS extensions. FKiSS 2 dolls are now common, so the lack of FKiSS 2 in RiscKiSS is beginning to make it look somewhat dated; the lack of support for the more complex colour models (Cherry KiSS and extended palette variants) exacerbates this.

PlayKISS has the most flexible and forgiving loader, but the RiscKiSS loader is faster, so you pays your phone bill and downloads the program of your choice.

PlayKISS support for FKISS2

!PlayKISS supports all the FKiSS 2.1 features proposed by Chad Randall, with the sole exception of the "music" function, which plays a MIDI file. Unfortunately, I don't understand MIDI, so this poses a slight problem. I'm currently playing with a demo version of ReMIDI, and when I have fully grokked it, I'll add support for "music" to PlayKISS.

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