Tile-based Movement and Animation - c++

Question

I am currently working on a demo, just to get to grips of how to make a game. It might turn into something in the future, but for now, it's just for learning.
My demo is, I guess, influenced by The Legend of Zelda. It has that top-down look that TLoZ has.
My sprite is a 32x32 pixel image, the demo runs at 60fps and I have already worked out how fast I want my sprite to animate using PyxelEdit. Each animation frame is being displayed every 170ms when my character walks. He moves 4 pixels every frame, so he is moving and animating at the speed I want him to.
The problem I have got is that I want my character to finish the animation loop when my key has been released and he won't. When I have released a movement key, he will sometimes stop on the wrong animation frame, like say his left or right foot is forward when I want him to be still. I'm just not sure how to do it. I've tried checking the animation count when the Event::KeyReleased event occurs and incrementing the animation count until it reaches a certain number so that it stops on say the number 1 so he's standing still, it just doesn't work.
I don't think this requires a look at my code, just need a general idea on how to go about making sure that when the a movement key is released, animate him until he is on frame 1 and move him a certain amount of pixels each time until he stops.

Answer 1

You could use a FSM so something along the lines of.
// Visual states of the character.
enum class State { WALKING, STANDING, ATTACK, };
State character_state = State::STANDING;
// Change on input (or other things like impact.)
if(input.up() || input.down() || input.left() || input.right)
character_state = State::WALKING;
else
character_state = State::STANDING;
// Render based on the current state.
switch(character_state)
{
case(State::WALKING):
render(cycle_walk_animation(frame_time));
break;
case(State::STANDING):
render(standing_still_frame());
break;
}
I've done this with 2D and 3D.

Answer 2

If I understand correctly, you need something like this:
// The game loop
while (game_running)
{
// ...
// Your code
// ...
// Advance the animation while moving, or if not, cycle through
// the animation frames until frame 1 is reached
if (keyPressed(somekey) || currentAnimationFrame != 1)
{
advanceAnimationFrame();
}
// ...
// Your code
// ...
}
Of course, this is not SFML code, but it should get the general idea across