Return from a Game Making Hiatus

Starting again...Some Engine Questions

I've been on these boards since before Coldstone was originally released (Under the name LiquidSquid). I have recently found myself with that excess of time I've always needed for game development so naturally dug out the ol' Coldstone CD and reinstalled and have returned to the boards to remember why I had stopped in the first place, lack of updates. Even so I've decided to trudge ahead anyways and do as much as I can currently, working in OS 9. I have come across a few dilemas however, so I searched the webboards and old resource websites, only to find all of them no longer there. I was namely looking for Ellrx's answer to multiple attack animations, which was on his website (No longer there...) If anyone has his old .pdf instructions it would be greatly appreciated, or perhaps even just his explaination or another newer approach to the problem of multiple player character attack animations that would be great. Also has there been an answer to the possibility of getting your character to have a "run" capability? I have thought about different possibilities and thought of this, let me know if I'm off base, for I haven't yet tried it:

Have a spell that is "run" i.e. increases player movement speed +10 (or whatever works) which then starts a counter. After 20 ticks (sec.) player movement speed -10 (Back to normal) and in essence uses up magic points, thus limiting the running capabilities of the player (Don't want people running everywhere, that'd be too easy!)

So in any case there are a couple questions to start with, glad to be back, and hope more people return to the boards.

Hail, God.

I've tried having multiple attack animations, and what happened was that you got two attacks instad of one. Even though it only showed one, the damage was dealt twice. I might have done something wrong though, it was several months ago.

And to answer your question about running, yes, that would work. However, you could use "karma" to see how tired the character is. Have a "sprint" key which gives you some extra speed and changes your character animation to one of the character running. Every round (?2 seconds) it deletes 1 karma and if karma=0 you can't run anymore.

Or, do like me and have a "haste" spell which changes your animation to one that is faster (faster attack, walk, cast) and add some speed. It could cost a lot of magic so the player still wouldn't be able to always be hasted.

Good luck.