How to make a stick man running when pressing a key? - actionscript-3

Question

I created a movieclip named stickman. In that, I created an animation by drawing a sequence of move in everyframe, so that stickman can run. Now what I want is that when I press a key, the stick man will run from left to right and when I release the key, it will stop. This is my code:
RunningMan.stop();
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN,keypresseddown);
function keypresseddown(event:KeyboardEvent):void
{
var key:uint = event.keyCode;
switch (key) {
case Keyboard.LEFT :
{
RunningMan.play();
RunningMan.x-=10;
RunningMan.scaleX=-1;
if(RunningMan.x<=0)
{
RunningMan.x=0;
}
};
case Keyboard.RIGHT :
{
RunningMan.play(); //play animated run
RunningMan.x+=10;
RunningMan.scaleX=1;
if(RunningMan.x>=stage.width)
{
RunningMan.x=stage.width;
}
};
default: RunningMan.stop();
}
}
However, when I pressed and held a key, it moved from left to right without animated run.
How can I fix it?
Thanks in advance.
EDIT:
I have a movieclip called character containing 3 movieclip named: standing, running and jumping, respectively. When I pressed up arrow key, it would jump, but if I released the key right away, it did not jump high as the jump movieclip could not finish its frames. This is the code:
if (key.isDown(Keyboard.LEFT))
{
gotoAndStop("running");
BGround.x+=speed;
scaleX=-1;
if(BGround.x>=stage.stageWidth)
BGround.x=stage.stageWidth;
}
else if (key.isDown(Keyboard.RIGHT))
{
gotoAndStop("running");
BGround.x -= speed;
scaleX=1;
}
else
if (key.isDown(Keyboard.UP))
{
gotoAndStop("jumping");
}
else
gotoAndStop("standing");
How can I fix that?

Answer 1

First of all, I hope RunningMan is an instance of the class, not the class itself. And if it is an instance, you should really follow common naming conventions for when you share your code with others (like you are doing now) so it would be runningMan.
So 1st, make the 1st frame of the runnigMan's timeline a picture of the man standing still and name it "still" or something. then name the second "running" and extend that like 20 frames or however long your animation is. at the last frame you will have to use timeline code. just one line of gotoAndPlay("running") will cause those frames of 2 to 20 (or whatever) to loop. When you tell the timeline to go to frame 1 from outside the timeline code, it wont loop anymore and will stay on the frame of the man standing still. So from outside when you want the loop to start:
runningMan.gotoAndPlay("running"); // frame 2
To stop:
runningMan.gotoAndStop("still"); // frame 1
Or you could do it from inside the RunningMan class
public function startRunAnimation():void{
this.gotoAndPlay("running");
}
public function stopRunAnimation():void{
this.gotoAndStop("still");
}
And you could use them just by replacing these function names with the ones you have if your code ex( instead of play() it would be startRunAnimation() )
EDIT
What you could do for this problem is to have a boolean variable for when your character is in the air (somewhere in your code where you do collision detection with the ground or where you handle gravity - however it is set up) so that this part of your code know when your character is in the air. And then you could simple test for this however way you need it.
...
if (key.isDown(Keyboard.UP) || this.inAir==true)
{
gotoAndStop("jumping");
}
else
gotoAndStop("standing");
Although if your character does not inheirt from a collidable object that has gravity, friction etc... then you would have to make the inAir property of whatever other class, public or make getter function for it - so that you can access it here. I hope this helps.