=== 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, by the way).

You can press Slash (/) to search for a string.  This is a very primitive
search, and is case sensitive, but is very useful.  Subsequent uses of the
Slash command will allow you to search for the same string again.  Note that
the search does not restart from the beginning of the file.

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").


=== 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 2.7.8.

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 (2.7.8), 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, well, a death mold.  Also significant was
the design of a generic "term.c" package, which has allowed Angband 2.7.X to
be easily ported to Macintosh, Amiga, X11, Windows, and basically every system
in existance (except for DOS-286, but this is being worked on).

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 2.7.8 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 is intended to be a nice, clean, stable version, so we
can all give copies to our friends.  But it was necessary to add some
new features anyway, and hopefully they will have no negative effects.

You can obtain the latest source via anonymous ftp from "ftp.cis.ksu.edu"
in the "/pub/Games/Angband" directory.  Pre-compiled versions of the game
are also available, try, for example, "/pub/Games/Angband/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@linc.cis.upenn.edu"), and you can post interesting experiences,
public flames, general 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.

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.

I am conducting a survey of who uses this version of Angband, and what they
think about it.  If you can, send me a brief email with the subject "SURVEY",
and I will start compiling a list.

Happy adventuring!

--- Ben ---
