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Text File | 1995-09-03 | 4.5 KB | 101 lines | [TEXT/MAng] |
- === 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 ---
-