To add to beoran's advice. You should also set up a timer so that every time the timer fires off, you update the animation (switch to the next image). You will have to decide for yourself how often you want the time to fire off.
In my Deluxe Pacman 2 game I have one large PNG image for my Pacman character in a 5x5 grid of images that make up the animation. When you are moving, the first 5 images are used and when you die, it goes through the rest.
My Allegro 5 code to load in my main pacman image, with this 5x5 grid of images is...
#SelectExpand
1 // Note: SPRITE_SIZE = the size of each image in your sheet
2 pacman.sheet
= al_load_bitmap("Graphics/Pacman.png");
3 if(!pacman.sheet
) {
4 // didn't load, do error stuff here
5 }
6 al_lock_bitmap(pacman.sheet,
al_get_bitmap_format(pacman.sheet
), ALLEGRO_LOCK_READONLY
);
7 for(int y
= 0; y
< 5; y
++) { // bitmaps are 5 rows
8 for(int x
= 0; x
< 5; x
++) { // by 5 columns
9 pacman.bitmap
[5 * y
+ x
] = NULL
;
10 pacman.bitmap
[5 * y
+ x
] = al_create_sub_bitmap(pacman.sheet, x
* SPRITE_SIZE, y
* SPRITE_SIZE, SPRITE_SIZE, SPRITE_SIZE
);
11 if(!pacman.bitmap
[5 * y
+ x
]) {
12 // sub_bitmap failed, handle error here
13 }
14 }
15 }
I then later set up a timer for the pacman animation...
pacman.ts holding the speed I wish to update this.
And in my game loop event checker, I check for the timer and update pacman's animation when it fires...
case ALLEGRO_EVENT_TIMER:
// PACMAN TIMER
if(event.timer.source == pacman.timer) {
// Do pacman stuff here
}
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