# Controlling games characters

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/controlling-games-characters/280863>\
**Category:** flash\
**Created:** [February 2, 2009, 11:30am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/controlling-games-characters/280863 "2009-02-02T11:30:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![benkyma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f08c70/32.png) [@benkyma](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/benkyma)\
**Post date:** [February 2, 2009, 11:30am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/controlling-games-characters/280863/1 "2009-02-02T11:30:01Z")

</div>

I’ve created a game character by importing frames individually into a movieclip. I have 8 movement directions, which each take up 5 frames. I was planning to code a check to see which direction my character is moving and then jump to the correct section of frames.  
I have an Animal class, which controls all Animal behaviours and instantiates the movieclip which contains all the animation frames. I can’t seem to access the timeline from here though, and when I view the character in-game, it is looping in a strange way, as if it is moving in all directions at once.

Should this:

```auto
zebra:Zebra = new Zebra();
zebra.stop();
this.addChild(zebra);

```

Not work?

Can anyone offer any insight into this, or some advice on the best way to get game charcters into a game and control them?