Animation doesn't play all the way through unless holding the key down

Questions & Answers
1

I am new to Unity and I am working on my first 2D platformer… my player is using the CharacterController2D from here:

I have various animations, like Idle, Walk, Jump, Kick, Punch, etc… and for the most part they’re working just fine. However, the Kick animation consists of 2 sprites (StartKick and EndKick). When I press the key to kick, it only plays the animation half way (to StartKick)… I need to hold the key down to make it play all the way. This is unsatisfactory; I would like to just tap the key and make the kick work all the way without having to hold the key down.

What can I do?

EDIT

By the way, here’s my Update method in a script attached to the player (which makes use of the CharacterController2D that I mentioned above:

public void Update()
{
	// grab our current velocity to use as a base for all calculations
	velocity = controller.velocity;

	if (controller.isGrounded)
	{
		velocity.y = 0;
	}

	if (Input.GetKey(KeyCode.D))
	{
		//some logic
	}
	
	// lots of else ifs here... (removed to make it clearer), then for kick:
	
	else if (Input.GetKey(KeyCode.E))
	{
		normalizedHorizontalSpeed = 0;

		if (controller.isGrounded)
		{
			animator.Play(Constants.AnimationStateHashes.Rick.Kick);
		}
	}
	else
	{
		normalizedHorizontalSpeed = 0;

		if (controller.isGrounded)
		{
			animator.Play(Constants.AnimationStateHashes.Rick.Idle);
		}
	}

	// we can only jump whilst grounded
	if (controller.isGrounded && Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.W))
	{
		velocity.y = Mathf.Sqrt(2f * jumpHeight * -gravity);
		animator.Play(Constants.AnimationStateHashes.Rick.JumpOrBlock);
	}

	// apply horizontal speed smoothing it
	var smoothedMovementFactor = controller.isGrounded ? groundDamping : inAirDamping; // how fast do we change direction?
	velocity.x = Mathf.Lerp(velocity.x, normalizedHorizontalSpeed * runSpeed, Time.deltaTime * smoothedMovementFactor);

	// apply gravity before moving
	velocity.y += gravity * Time.deltaTime;

	controller.move(velocity * Time.deltaTime);
}
2

It appears that it is becoming interrupted due to the if else logic.

When you release the E key, on the next Update the else is triggered which makes the idle animation kick in. Its really playing less than half but you see half due to the transition to idle, I do believe.

If you don’t want to use the State Machine you should implement states in your code instead. You can do this with a switch perhaps. Realistically though, you need to check which animation is currently playing before you call another. This could also be tricky without the state machine as nothing is layered.