5 Tilt the floor to roll a ball through an obstacle course within the
6 given time. If the ball falls or time expires, a ball is lost.
8 Collect coins to unlock the exit and earn extra balls. Red coins are
9 worth 5. Blue coins are worth 10. A ball is awarded for 100 coins.
14 Click Play to begin. Mouse motion tilts the floor. Mouse buttons
15 rotate the viewpoint. The following keyboard controls are defined by
16 default; most of them can be changed in a configuration file. See
19 ESC Pause and resume / Exit
20 SHIFT Fast camera rotation
28 F9 Toggle frame counter
31 UP Tilt the floor forward
32 DOWN Tilt the floor backward
33 LEFT Tilt the floor left
34 RIGHT Tilt the floor right
36 D Rotate the view right
37 S Rotate the view left
39 R Restart the current level
41 TAB Cycle through scores in high-score table
46 Neverball levels are grouped in level sets. All sets are immediately
47 accessible to the player, and track of progress is kept separately for
48 each set. The player starts out at the first level and must complete
49 each level in turn to unlock subsequent levels until all levels in the
50 set are completed. A level is "unlocked" by completing the previous
51 level in the progression or if it is the first level of the set. A
52 level is "completed" by collecing the required amount of coins to
53 activate the goal in the level and reaching said goal.
55 There are two game modes or ways of progressing through levels in
56 Neverball. Each mode is essentially a subset of the single way of
57 playing present in Neverball 1.4.0.
59 In 1.4.0, the game keeps track of "lives" or balls, preventing a level
60 from being retried once the balls run out, however, unlocked/completed
61 levels remain accessible in the menu at all times. As a special case,
62 1.4.0 also records a set high-score (see below for information on
63 high-scores) when all levels of a set are played through in one
64 attempt, with the condition that no successfully-completed level be
65 restarted during the run.
67 To address some of the problems with this mode of playing, in
68 Neverball 1.5.0 it was split into two separate modes: the "normal"
69 mode and the challenge mode.
71 In the normal mode, no track of balls is kept. Each
72 unlocked/completed level is immediately accessible and can be retried
73 and restarted mid-game as often as desired.
75 In the challenge mode, the player is given a limited number of balls
76 and starts out at the first level of the set with all other levels
77 locked. The game ends once the balls run out or all levels in the set
78 are completed. A set score is recorded for a successful run. Levels
79 cannot be restarted, but can be retried.
81 In addition to regular 1.4.0-style levels, Neverball 1.5.0 introduces
82 bonus levels: extra levels awarded for playing challenge mode. Bonus
83 levels can only be unlocked by completing all the levels before them
84 in challenge mode, however, bonus levels themselves are skipped
85 challenge mode; after they have been unlocked, they can be played in
86 the normal mode as any regular level.
91 Neverball creates a directory in which it stores user data files.
92 These files include high scores, replays, and configurations.
94 Under Unix, Linux, and OSX this directory is called ".neverball" and
95 is created in the user's home directory, specifically, the directory
96 set in the HOME environment variable.
98 Under Windows it is called "Neverball" and is created in the user's
99 application data directory the location of which is obtained by
100 inspecting the APPDATA environment variable. An easy way to access
101 this directory is by typing %APPDATA% in the Windows Explorer address
102 bar. If the location could not be determined, it is assumed that the
103 user has permission to write to the game data directory, and the user
104 data directory is created within.
109 The top three fastest times through each level, the top three coin
110 scores and the top three goal unlock scores for each level are stored
111 in files named neverballhs-* in the user data directory.
113 The top three fastest times and most coins scores for each set of
114 levels are also stored. To achieve a set score, the player must play
115 through all 25 levels of a set in one attempt.
117 The total set time will include time spent during both successful and
118 unsuccesful level plays, thus time-outs and fall-outs count against
121 The total set coin count will include only coins collected on
122 successful level plays. This prevents unbounded coin scores from
123 being collected on levels with more than 100 coins.
129 Neverball includes a mechanism for recording and replaying levels.
130 The player may enter a name for each replay at the end of the level.
131 By default, the most recent unsaved level will be saved to the replay
132 file named "Last.nbr".
134 Replay files are stored in the user data directory. They may be
135 copied freely. To view a replay you have downloaded, simply move it
136 to the user data directory and it will appear in the Replay menu
143 Neverputt is Neverball's mini-game. What you do is that you put your
144 ball over a course and you are to get it in the hole as few strokes as
145 possible, if you can get less strokes than par, you are a good player.
146 If you can get the ball in one stroke, that is even better.
148 The scores add up to make the total score for the course. Try to avoid
149 going over par if you can help it.
155 Game settings are stored in the file neverballrc in the user data
156 directory. This file is created when the game exits. It consists of
157 key / value pairs. Some of these values are configurable using the
158 in-game options screen. Other meaningful keys and their default
163 This key controls mouse sensitivity. The value gives the
164 number of screen pixels the mouse pointer must move to rotate
165 the floor through its entire range. A smaller number means
170 This key inverts the vertical mouse axis if set to 1.
178 These keys define keyboard mappings for camera selection and
179 rotation. Key names are specified using SDL's canonical key
180 naming convention. The three camera behaviors are as follows:
182 1 - Strict camera stays behind the ball by cueing off of the
183 velocity of the ball. It is very responsive, but sometimes
186 2 - Lazy camera chases a point a set distance from the ball.
187 It is seldom surprising, but at times it is not sufficiently
190 3 - Locked camera does not rotate except by player command.
197 These keys define the view of the ball. They give the field
198 of view in degrees, the height of the view point, the height
199 of the view center, and the horizontal distance from the ball
200 in centimeters, respectively. (The ball is 50 centimeters in
201 diameter in most levels.)
203 The default values for these keys changed with version 1.2.6.
204 Some players may be interested in using the old values. They
215 These keys control the rate of camera rotation. Roughly, they
216 give the rate of lateral camera motion in centimeters per
217 seconds, so the actual rotation rate depends upon view_dz,
218 above. The fast rate is used when the Shift key is held down.
222 This key enables an on-screen frames-per-second counter. Press
223 F9 to toggle this flag in-game.
227 This key enables a delay function after each frame is
228 rendered, forcing a context switch and ensuring that the game
229 does not utilize 100% of the CPU. 0 is off, 1 is on.
231 If the frame rate is not fast enough for you, or you simply
232 want to test the performance of the game on your hardware,
235 Press F8 to toggle this flag in-game.
240 These keys determine the texture image applied to the coin and
241 ball. If you prefer collecting euros to collecting dollars,
244 coin png/euro_coin.png
248 This key enables quad-buffered stereo viewing for those with
249 the hardware to support it. It gives an angle in degrees that
250 determines the interocular distance. 0 is normal non-stereo
251 viewing. 2 gives a good stereo effect. If the eyes are
252 swapped, give a negative value, like -2.
256 This key enables joystick control. 0 is off, 1 is on. The
257 game may still be controlled with the mouse even while gamepad
258 control is enabled. However, random noise from an analog
259 controller at rest can disrupt normal mouse input.
263 This number selects which joystick to use if more than one
264 joystick is found. 0 is the first joystick, 1 is the second
269 Joystick horizontal axis number
273 Joystick vertical axis number
277 Joystick menu select button
281 Joystick menu cancel button
285 Joystick counter-clockwise camera rotation button
289 Joystick clockwise camera rotation button
291 joystick_button_exit 4
297 Contact: <robert.kooima@gmail.com>