Platform Game Animations

programming
1

Has anyone got any good techniques for playing different character animations on key presses in platform games. So far I have a player MovieClip with nested animation movieclips set on different frames but in my code when i try the following :

[AS]
// moveRight is a boolean variable for if the right button is pressed
// moveLeft is a boolean variable for if the left button is pressed

// walking is a frame label in the player movieclip
// idle is a frame label in the player movieclip

//Physics.PLAYERSPEED is an integer for moving the player

        if(moveRight) {
            if(this.currentFrame != 2) {
            this.x += Physics.PLAYERSPEED;
            this.gotoAndStop("walking"); 
            }
        }
        else if(moveLeft) {
            if(this.currentFrame != 2) {
            this.x -= Physics.PLAYERSPEED; 
            this.gotoAndStop("walking");
            }
        }
        else {
            this.gotoAndStop("idle");
        }

[/AS]

The above code plays the animation once but dont loop like I thought it would ?

Thanks