=== Using the online help ===

You can press Escape at any time to leave the online help.

You can press Question Mark (?) to return to the previous help file.

You can press Space to advance one page, or Return to advance one line.
If you reach the end of the help file, you will wrap around to the start.

You can press Minus (-) to back up one half page at a time towards the
start of the help file (this is very inefficient).

You can press Pound (#) to go to a specific line (defaults to line zero).

You can press Percent (%) to go to a specific file (defaults to "help.hlp").

You can press Slash (/) to search for a string.  This is a very primitive
case sensitive search.  Slash plus return will search for the previous search
string again.  The search does not wrap around at the end of the file, to
search again from the top, use Pound + Zero + Return + Slash + Return.


=== General Information ===

The game of Angband is a single player dungeon simulation.  A player
may choose from a number of races and classes when creating a character,
and then "run" that character over a period of days, weeks, even months,
attempting to win the game by defeating Morgoth, the Lord of Darkness,
who resides far below the surface.

The player will begin his adventure on the town level where he may acquire
supplies, weapons, armor, and magical devices by bartering with various shop
owners.  After preparing for his adventure, the player can descend into
the Pits of Angband where fantastic adventures await his coming!
 
You will probably want to browse through the "help files", especially the
one on available commands, before beginning any serious adventuring...



=== A note from the maintainer ===

Welcome to Angband 2.7.9.

My name is Ben Harrison, and I have been the maintainer of Angband since
November, 1994, when the previous maintainer, Charles Swiger (who developed
Angband 2.5.1 through 2.6.2), got a real job.  Starting with Angband 2.7.0,
and continuing through the current version (2.7.9), I have been responsible
for a number of major improvements to the basic Angband game, some of them
obvious to the casual user and others hidden below the surface, but no less
significant.  The most significant improvement has been a total rewrite of
large portions of the code, which, after ten years of modifications by various
people, had begun to resemble a rotting death mold.  Also significant was
the design of a generic "term.c" package, which has allowed Angband to be
easily ported to Macintosh, Amiga, X11, Windows, and basically every system
in existance (including a beta-version for DOS-286).

In addition, I have added lots of new commands, features, and functionalities,
most of which appear to have been accepted by most people as a good idea (TM).

It is extremely easy to port Angband 2.7.9 to a new system.  If you cannot
find a version that will compile on your machine, you can usually make one
by writing a single file of about one hundred lines of C code.

Angband 2.7.8 was intended to be a nice, clean, stable version, so we
can all give copies to our friends.  Unfortunately, it contained a few
minor bugs.  The *enchant* armor/weapon scrolls were "swapped".  The
game starts to look funny if too many objects accumulate on the floor.
The "Q" command (commit suicide) does not work (switch to the original
keyset and use the "^K" command if necessary, or try "\" + "ctrl-k").
There have been reports that ball weapons can explode through walls.
You may not be able to "correctly" load pre-2.7.0 savefiles.  Some dungeon
levels (containing monster pits, lesser vaults, etc) may take minutes to
generate.  Good drops can include cursed rings of speed.

Angband 2.7.9 is intended to be a transition version from 2.7.8 to 2.8.0,
cleaning up some internal code issues, and extending the functionality of
some existing commands (such as target and look).  It includes minor tweaks
to various aspects of the program, including the use of slightly different
symbols and colors and names for a few monsters (townspeople were "p" but
are now "t", ticks were "t" but are now "S", demons were "I"/"&" but are
now "u"/"U", Umber hulks were "U" but are now "K", Jabberwoks were "J" but
are now Chaos Beetle and are now "K", fruit flies and giant fleas are now
insects ("I") which look like the lice ("l"), leaving "F" for dragon flies,
and various other simple changes of that general nature).

Angband 2.8.0 will introduce a version independant savefile format, along
with a new terrain feature concept, and the ability to allow multiple objects
in the same cave grid.  It may or may not separate the "unique" monsters from
the "normal" monsters, perhaps introducing some new "normal" monsters, such
as "skeleton lord" or "giant boar" or "master mage".

You can obtain the latest source and pre-compiled executables from various
places, try "ftp://ftp.cis.ksu.edu/pub/Games/Angband/Angband-2.7.x" and
the developer site at "ftp://export.andrew.cmu.edu/angband".  You will need
to enter the appropriate sub-directory, such as "Source" or "Macintosh".

You may freely distribute the game, and its source, though you are bound
not only by the existing copyright notice from 1984, but also whatever
restrictions may be present on various other pieces of the code.

You can email compliments, complaints, bug reports, and presents to
me ("benh@voicenet.com"), and you can post interesting experiences,
general questions, compilation questions and code suggestions to the
newsgroup ("rec.games.roguelike.angband").

There are a variety of new commands, some of which are described in the
"commands.txt" help file, and some of which may have been forgotten.

The basic help files supplied with this game are more or less up to date,
but when in doubt, the source (or the newsgroup) is the place to turn for
advice.  Or attempt to figure it out by experimentation, this is sometimes
the most fun.

The documentation is very easy to modify and update, so you may want to
check in to the ftp site occasionally to see if there are any new help
files (or spoiler files) for you to acquire.  Note that the spoiler files
are not distributed with the source since they are so huge, but you can
obtain them from various places as with the source and executables.  New
spoiler files may be placed in the "lib/help" or "lib/info" directories,
to allow access via the "online help" system.

Remember to tell all your friends about how much you like Angband...

Happy adventuring!

--- Ben ---
