Workflow: How Do I manage Complex Input Options and States?

Greetings, all. To start off, my programming logic is fairly weak and I'm mostly restricted to if-statements. I've not dabbled much with loops yet, nor have I been able to fully figure out functions with multiple parameters. If those would aid in what I'm trying to do, I'd love some direction in those.

Here's the file I'm currently working on:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B04y2QAf15bveXh4SWFhQXFWdWs/view?usp=sharing

Link sprites created by TheSaiyanHog. Animations have been removed for now so I can figure out how to handle my variables.

I'm attempting to create platformer mechanics of Super Smash Bros. 3DS's Smash Run and I'm trying to manage all my variables in groups of states. So for example, I would have the following:

Player.state

Ground Air Landed Slide Climb Water_Under Water_Out

Player.mod

Crouch Crouch-Walk Walk Run Dash

There are several others that are incomplete as I'm having a touch enough time working with these states.

The biggest hurdle I'm coming across is telling Player what to do depending on user input as well as transitioning from state to state. Just when I think I've covered all possibilities on how a state should transition, a bug crops up. Modular design just isn't happening with my current approach; I'm having to recode most of it when I add a single variable. My head's spinning enough as-is with movement. I'm not certain how I'll be handling other states like player bonuses, penalties, attacking, defending, terrain movement limits, etc. If anyone has a sample file of a similar project I could look at, that'd also be awesome.

To anyone curious, here's an older save I have for when I had animation tied to it:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B04y2QAf15bvN1h1QVZOZHdpNXc/view?usp=sharing

This was before I started using playerBase for Platform behavior to work better.

Hi Dave. I'd strongly recommend that you invest a little time in getting familiar with other programming functionality (like switches, loops and functions) even if you just develop some small experimental projects to dabble with those features. Then you'll find that you can advance your main game much more effectively.

Heh, I used to do some basic code in C and Java --about 7 years ago. I'm quite rusty. *laughs* My hangup may be GUI, honestly. Although one of the projects I could never figure out was Tic-Tac-Toe with AI. Single and Two-player weren't a problem, though.

Ok. Well using the Construct 2 interface is certainly very different from that kind of programming but some of the underlying the principles are the same. Personally I'm more familiar with working in notepad++ to code (mostly php and mysql scripts nowadays), so the constraints of the Construct 2 interface was the biggest hurdle I had to overcome.