I have been overhauling AquaNimble’s menus over the past week. There was an imperfection with the menu controls themselves and that has now been fixed. Mouse support for the menus has been pulled from the game, perhaps even permanently since it is a controller or keyboard based game.

Another weak point to AquaNimble has always been the vessel selection screen. The major problem is having to fit four players into one screen and making it tall enough to show the text, the guns and the information. Even playing alone  you were forced to see all four selection slots.

The enhancement has been mixed with another issue and that is setting up controller support for extra players. The problem is player 1 has to use the controls set for player 1. To change it, you need to enter the settings > controls and well that is just cumbersome.

So now the working format is to select the amount of players, then select arcade, custom game or whatever else. From there you select your control method by pushing a key on the keyboard or button on the controller. Its simple. This method allows player 1 to have controller 3 or player 2 can suddenly have keyboard controls if need be.

From there, all players can select their vessel. If you have four players, you see all four slots, but if you have only one player, you only see that one player and so on for two and three players. It makes the game feel like its geared for the amount of players you’re playing with.

After seeing a few Youtube let’s plays of AquaNimble, I discovered that its quite the task to scroll through around 20 vessels. So I made a visual of all the ships you have at the bottom of the screen. Before adjusting the vessel select format, I felt like it was just too cramped for that. Now everything is open enough to have plenty of room for the selection screen.

This is just the first phase of the vessel selection and control settings overhaul. The next session will improve setting custom controls.