"My computer does not meet the stated minimum system requirements, and yet I insist on trying to play it anyway and blaming you, rlk, for writing a crappy game. WTF?"
The biggest performance killer is reflection. Turn that off in the Options screen. This feature requires a stencil buffer, which is poorly supported on some hardware. So in the event that the game doesn't even run, set reflection 0 in the neverballrc file.
Next, disable Shadow in the Options screen or set shadow 0 in the neverballrc file.
If your video board has less than 16MB of VRAM, set Textures to Low in the Options, or textures 2 in the neverballrc. This will eliminate texture thrashing.
You can also try setting Geometry to Low, but I'm sure you knew that already. It does reduce the onscreen polygon count somewhat, but not a lot. It's more of a placebo option. After clicking on it you can start composing a nasty email demanding support for this game that you didn't pay for.
"I HATE the new camera settings!"
As documented in the README file, the camera may be returned to its pre-1.2.6 configuration by editing the following values in your neverballrc file.
view_fov 50
view_dp 400
view_dc 0
view_dz 600
"The game takes control of my mouse. How can I make it let go so I can use another window?"
Press the spacebar to pause the game and toggle the pointer grab.
"Why don't you add an option to zoom the camera in and out?
This is, without a doubt, the single most common feature suggestion I hear. The short answer is: "Because Super Monkey Ball doesn't have that feature."
The long answer recognizes the fact that the design of Neverball is not motivated by precise conformance to Monkey Ball. The truth is that the camera zoom has a profound effect on gameplay. It's much easier from far away. Allowing the player to zoom the camera removes the immersion that a 3rd person perspective provides, but that an overhead view does not. It undermines the latitude that the level designer has in shaping the feel and challenge of a level. In total, it changes the style of the game.
"How do I set the mouse sensitivity?
Mouse sensitivity is set using the mouse_sense option in the neverballrc file. The default value is 300. This gives the number of screen pixels the mouse pointer must move to rotate the floor through its entire range. A smaller number means more sensitive.
One word of caution: new players often feel that the mouse is too sensitive. It may seem so for early levels, but it can be very different for later levels.
"I see a bug! When the ball goes below a platform you can see the shadow ABOVE the ball!"
I know. The shadow code is easier this way. Don't think of it as a shadow, think of it as a reference point that tells you where a bouncing ball will land.
"It won't compile. It says something about...
... sdl-config: Command not found
The game requires SDL, SDL_image, SDL_mixer, and SDL_ttf to run. To compile, it also requires the header files for each of these, so you'll need to install packages for SDL-devel, SDL_image-devel, SDL_mixer-devel, and SDL_ttf-devel.