IKA: ANIMATIONS/FRAMES

To be more specific about writing an animation system, you'll basically want a sprite object. Said object should have an array of images for each frame (ideally, you'd load a single image file and splice it down to each frame using surfaces but you can use single image files for each frame for testing purposes). You'd then want a Draw function in the sprite object that calls something like:

self.MyImages.Draw(self.x, self.y)

Where self.Frame is a number representing which frame is currently being drawn.

Next you'd want an Update function that increments the frame number with a slight delay. You'd also want it to decide which frame number it starts incrementing from based on the direction it's facing, so have a Direction property as well. You'd probably want a dictionary of lists containing the frame list for each direction. ie,

MyFrames = { 'left': , 'right': }

then turn your drawing function into:

self.MyImages[ self.MyFrames ].Draw( self.x, self.y)

Presto, you have animation!

See the 3 part tutorial on the ika website for how to create a basic Sprite object and get it drawn/updated.

Alternatley you could use the built-in sprite system ika has, try finding the rho software (PROBABLY included with ika) to import stuff. It's a beta and somewhat broken but workable.

Hope you only like your OS to run for exactly 5 months.