How do use my punch animations in 8 direction?

I am using the 8 direction behavior for movement and I have my player pinned to a 'direction' sprite. I have all the animations for movement and fighting. The movement is fine but I can't seem to get him to punch or preform fight animations.

I haven't found any tutorials or demos that have a similar movement event sheet to mine [8-direction], so I was looking to start from scratch.

I have included a screenshot of my event sheet. Where do I start? How do I start?

If one object is pinned you don't need to simulate the movement of both. For the animations you can set some kind of state for the player when you press attack key, then you use this to block out the movement animations. So when moving and 'not attacking' > play move animation. When 'attacking' play attack animation.

The player and directions sprites only seem to work when they're both simulated. I've tried the states but I must be missing something because when I press the attack button 'Z', the player freezes and the 8 dir movement jams. Its as if something is still running.

The player probably seems to freeze because it plays the animation once and doesn't have anything to go back to. I would consider what i mentioned above and use one object for movement and one for animation, it will be a nightmare trying to track the simulated movement of both. Since you pinned the player object, you should be using that to set the visual animations only and use the pink object for movement, player should not even have an 8 direction behaviour on it to avoid confusion.

i hope you are pinning to the right object, isnt it that the player is to be pinned to the direction sprite. usually, it should work fine without simulating both the player and direction sprite to eight direction control. check if the pinning is right.