=== 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 Equals (=) to hilite lines containing a string (case sensitive).

You can press Slash (/) to search for a string.  Use Slash + Return to continue
a search.  Use Pound + Zero + Return + Slash + Return to restart a search.


=== General Information ===

The game of Zangband 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 the Great Serpent of Chaos, who
lurks somewhere in the depths of the dungeon.

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 (of standard Angband) ===

Welcome to Angband 2.7.9v6.

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.  You may not be able
to load older savefiles.  Some special dungeon levels may take a long
time to generate.  Good drops can include cursed rings of speed.  But
you can see that none of these are "fatal", so Angband 2.7.8 remains
for now the most "official" version.

Angband 2.7.9v1 through Angband 2.7.9v6 are intended as "transition" versions
leading up to the release of Angband 2.8.0.  Angband 2.8.0 will include many
extensive changes from Angband 2.7.8, see the web page for more information.

Most of these changes have been completed, and include things like cleaning
up some internal code issues, optimizing the code (again), extending the
functionality of some existing commands (such as target and look, which now
handle directional motion), tweaking various aspects of the program, most
notably in the introduction of new symbols and colors for various monsters,
and in the use of a more regular set of RGB values for the various color
codes, etc.  Again, see the web page for a complete list.

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 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").

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 should visit "http://www.voicenet.com/~benh/Angband/" (the Official
Angband Home Page) and "http://www.paranoia.com/~jth/angband.html" (the
Unofficial Angband Home Page), for more up to date information.

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, including
the fact that any source written by me is technically automatically placed
under copyright and may thus not be used for commercial purposes.

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.  In particular, see "commands.txt" for information on the
available commands, some of which have been recently added or changed,
and "options.txt", which describe how to customize several aspects of
the game to suit your preferences.

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 +++
