Hey hey hey! Sorry to hear of your problems. Animations confused me big time until I got some help from the Captain (RIP).
If you want, you can send me your cap or upload it and I can take a look.
Basically, you're going to only be making the animations for facing right, and check the "auto mirror" under properties to flip the animation. When player presses the right key, set the angle of the player to 0; when left set the angle to 180.
Here is the code I'm using for my project: (edited for simplicity)
MouseKeyboard: Key Right arrow is down
System: 0 SpankyBoot[Platform].VectorY Equal to 0
Spanky: Value 'Dead' Equal to 0
System: Trigger once
SpankySet animation to "Walk"
SpankyPlay current animation
SpankySet angle to 0
SpankyBootSet angle to 0
The 'dead' value thing is just so that player cannot move once marked as being dead.
When trying to change the animation of the sprite (from Idle to walking for example) make sure to use this guideline:
1. Change Sprite to "animationname"
2. Set Sprite Animation Frame to 1
3. Sprite: Play Animation
(yes i know that isn't followed in the above code )
Making duck animations is a little trickier, and attack animations that involve not shooting objects (like using a sword attached to the player or a punch) is definately a bit more complex. My game's sprite has three detectors: Hit Detector, Attack detector and Floor detector.
LOL this is probably more confusing than I intended for ti to be...explaining things isn't my strong point
perhaps I'm better off looking at you cap to help ya out