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 levels of a set in challenge mode.
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.
128 Neverball includes a mechanism for recording and replaying levels.
129 The player may enter a name for each replay at the end of the level.
130 By default, the most recent unsaved level will be saved to the replay
131 file named "Last.nbr".
133 Replay files are stored in the user data directory. They may be
134 copied freely. To view a replay you have downloaded, simply move it
135 to the user data directory and it will appear in the Replay menu
141 Game settings are stored in the file neverballrc in the user data
142 directory. This file is created when the game exits. It consists of
143 key / value pairs. Some of these values are configurable using the
144 in-game options screen. Other meaningful keys and their default
149 This key controls mouse sensitivity. The value gives the
150 number of screen pixels the mouse pointer must move to rotate
151 the floor through its entire range. A smaller number means
156 This key inverts the vertical mouse axis if set to 1.
164 These keys define keyboard mappings for camera selection and
165 rotation. Key names are specified using SDL's canonical key
166 naming convention. The three camera behaviors are as follows:
168 1 - Strict camera stays behind the ball by cueing off of the
169 velocity of the ball. It is very responsive, but sometimes
172 2 - Lazy camera chases a point a set distance from the ball.
173 It is seldom surprising, but at times it is not sufficiently
176 3 - Locked camera does not rotate except by player command.
183 These keys define the view of the ball. They give the field
184 of view in degrees, the height of the view point, the height
185 of the view center, and the horizontal distance from the ball
186 in centimeters, respectively. (The ball is 50 centimeters in
187 diameter in most levels.)
189 The default values for these keys changed with version 1.2.6.
190 Some players may be interested in using the old values. They
201 These keys control the rate of camera rotation. Roughly, they
202 give the rate of lateral camera motion in centimeters per
203 seconds, so the actual rotation rate depends upon view_dz,
204 above. The fast rate is used when the Shift key is held down.
208 This key enables an on-screen frames-per-second counter. Press
209 F9 to toggle this flag in-game.
213 This key enables a delay function after each frame is
214 rendered, forcing a context switch and ensuring that the game
215 does not utilize 100% of the CPU. 0 is off, 1 is on.
217 If the frame rate is not fast enough for you, or you simply
218 want to test the performance of the game on your hardware,
221 Press F8 to toggle this flag in-game.
226 These keys determine the texture image applied to the coin and
227 ball. If you prefer collecting euros to collecting dollars,
230 coin png/euro_coin.png
234 This key enables quad-buffered stereo viewing for those with
235 the hardware to support it. It gives an angle in degrees that
236 determines the interocular distance. 0 is normal non-stereo
237 viewing. 2 gives a good stereo effect. If the eyes are
238 swapped, give a negative value, like -2.
242 This key enables joystick control. 0 is off, 1 is on. The
243 game may still be controlled with the mouse even while gamepad
244 control is enabled. However, random noise from an analog
245 controller at rest can disrupt normal mouse input.
249 This number selects which joystick to use if more than one
250 joystick is found. 0 is the first joystick, 1 is the second
255 Joystick horizontal axis number
259 Joystick vertical axis number
263 Joystick menu select button
267 Joystick menu cancel button
271 Joystick counter-clockwise camera rotation button
275 Joystick clockwise camera rotation button
277 joystick_button_exit 4
283 Contact: <robert.kooima@gmail.com>