A quick demonstration
*********************

Angband is a very complex game, so you may want to try the following
quick demonstration. The following instructions are for demonstration
purposes only, and so they are intentionally boring.

For this demo, we will assume that you have never played Angband
before, that you have not requested any special "sub-windows", that
you have not requested any special "graphics" modes, that you have a
"numeric keypad" on your computer, and that you are using the default
options, including, in particular, the "original" command set. If any
of these assumptions are incorrect, you will need to keep in mind that
this demo may not work; in particular note that Windows users will be
using graphical tiles by default, so unless you turn off graphics map
symbols below will be replaced by little pictures.  There are many
ways to view this file while playing.

Any time you see the '-more-' prompt, read the message and press
space. This takes precedence over any other instructions. At any other
prompt, for example, if you accidentally hit a key, you can normally
"cancel" the action in progress by pressing escape.

When the game starts up, depending on what platform you are using, you
may be taken directly to the character creation screen, or you may
have to ask to create a new character by using the File menu. In
either case, you will be shown the character information screen, and
you will be given a series of choices. For this demo, press "a" three
times to elect a "human warrior" character with the point-based stat
allocation system. You will now be presented with a description of
your character. Look over the description briefly, there is a lot of
information here, and most of it will not make any sense. Press enter
four times and your character will be placed into the "town".

You should now be looking at the basic dungeon interaction screen. To
the left is some information about your character. To the right is an
overhead view of the town. Nothing happens in Angband while the game
is waiting for you to specify a command, so take a good look at the
town. You will see a variety of symbols on the screen. Each symbol
normally represents a terrain feature, an object, or a monster. The
"@" symbol is special, it represents your character. You can use the
"/" command to find out what a given symbol represents. Press "/" then
"@" now to verify the meaning of the "@" symbol.

The solid blocks (which may be "#" symbols on some systems) around the
edge of the town represent the walls that surround the town. You
cannot leave the town above ground, although some games derived from
Angband (called "variants") have an overground element.

The rectangular blocks of walls with a number on the edge represent
stores. The number is the entrance to the store.  The "." symbols
represent the "floor". It is currently daytime, so most of the town
should consist of stores and illuminated floor grids.  There will also
be a few ":" symbols which represent rubble.  Rubble comes in two
varieties, "passable rubble" and just "rubble", distinguished by
color.  Both block vision, but you can move through passable rubble.

Any "alphabetic" symbols always represent monsters, where the word
"monsters" specifies a wide variety of entities, including people,
animals, plants, etc. Only a few "races" of monsters normally appear
in town, and most of them are harmless (avoid any mercenaries or
veterans if you see them). The most common "monsters" in town are
small animals (cats and dogs) and townspeople (merchants, mercenaries,
miscreants, etc).

Now use the "l" command to "look" around. This allows you to move the
cursor around and get a description of what is present at the cursor.
The cursor always starts on the square containing your character. In
this case, you will see a message telling you that your character is
standing on a staircase. Pressing space will cycle through the
interesting locations nearby. Press "q" or ESCAPE to exit the look
command.

Now press "i", to display your character's "inventory". New characters
start out with some objects to help them survive (though there is an
option to start with more money instead). Your character will have
some food, a potion, some torches, and a scroll. Press ESCAPE to get
out of the inventory display. Press "e" to see what you are wearing.
You will find you are wearing armour on your body, wielding a dagger
and lighting the way with a torch. You have many other equipment slots
but they are all currently empty. Press ESCAPE to get out of the
equipment display.

Press "t" to take something off. Note that the equipment listing is
reduced to those objects which can actually be taken off. Press "g" to
take off the armour, and then press "e" again. Note that the armour is
no longer shown in the equipment. Press ESCAPE. Press "w" to wield
something and observe that the inventory listing is reduced to those
objects which can actually be wielded or worn, press "e" to put the
armour back on.

Monsters can only move after you use a command which takes "energy"
from your character. So far, you have used the "w" and "t" commands,
which take energy, and the "e", "i", "l", and "/" commands, which are
"free" commands, and so do not take any energy. In general, the only
commands which take energy are the ones which require your character
to perform some action in the world of the game, such as moving
around, attacking monsters, and interacting with objects.

If there were any monsters near your character while you were
experimenting with the "w" and "t" commands, you may have seen them
"move" or even "attack" your character. Although unlikely, it is even
possible that your character has already been killed. This is the only
way to lose the game. So if you have already lost, simply exit the
game and restart this demo.

One of the most important things that your character can do is move
around. Use the numeric keys on the keypad to make your character move
around. The "4", "6", "8", and "2" keys move your character west,
east, north, and south, and the "7", "9", "1" and "3" keys move your
character diagonally. When your character first moves, observe the ">"
symbol that is left behind. This is the "staircase" that she was
standing on earlier in the demo - it is the entrance to the dungeon.

Attempting to stay away from monsters, try and move your character
towards the entrance to the "general store", which is represented as a
"1" on the screen. As your character moves around, use the "l" command
to look around. You can press escape at any time to cancel the
looking. If you die, start over.

One of the hardest things for people to get used to, when playing
games of this nature for the first time, is that the character is not
the same as the player. The player presses keys, and looks at a
computer screen, while the character performs complex actions, and
interacts with a virtual world. The player decides what the character
should do, and tells her to do it, and the character then performs the
actions. These actions may induce some changes in the virtual world.
Some of these changes may be apparent to the character, and
information about the changes is then made available to the player by
a variety of methods, including messages, character state changes, or
visual changes to the screen. Some changes may only be apparent to the
player.

There are also a whole set of things that the player can do that can
not even be described in the virtual world inhabited by the character,
such as resize windows, read online help files, modify colormaps, or
change options. Some of these things may even affect the character in
abstract ways, for example, the player can request that from now on
all monsters know exactly where the character is at all times.
Likewise, there are some things that the character does on a regular
basis that the player may not even consider, such as digesting food,
or searching for traps while walking down a hallway.

To make matters worse, as you get used to the difference between the
player and the character, it becomes so "obvious" that you start to
ignore it. At that point, you find yourself merging the player and the
character in your mind, and you find yourself saying things like "So
yesterday, I was at my friend's house, and I stayed up late playing
Angband, and I was attacked by some wild dogs, and I got killed by a
demon, but I made it to the high score list", in which the pronoun
changes back and forth from the real world to the virtual one several
times in the same sentence. So, from this point on you may have to
separate the player and the character for yourself.

So anyway, keep walking towards the entrance to the general store
until you actually walk into it. At this point, the screen should
change to the store interaction screen. You will see the name of the
shop-keeper, and the name of the shop, and a list of objects which are
available. If there are more than twelve different objects, you can
use the space or arrow keys to scroll the list of objects. The general
store is the only store with a fixed inventory, although the amount of
various items may vary. One of the items sold here are flasks of oil.
Press 'down' to highlight the line with flasks of oil and press the
"p" key to purchase some. If you are asked how many you want, just hit
enter. Any time you are asked a question and there is already
something under the cursor, pressing return will accept that choice.
Hit enter to accept the price. Many commands work inside the store,
for example, use the "i" command to see your inventory, with the new
flask of oil. Note that your inventory is always kept sorted in a
semi-logical order, so the indexes of some of the objects may change
as your inventory changes.

Purchase a few more flasks of oil, if possible: this time, when asked
how many you want, press "3" then return to buy three flasks at once.
Flasks of oil are very important for low level characters, because not
only can they be used to fuel a lantern (when you find one), but also
they can be ignited and thrown at monsters from a distance. So it is
often a good idea to have a few extra flasks of oil. Press escape to
leave the store. If you want, take time to visit the rest of the
stores. One of the buildings, marked with an "8", is your "home", and
is not a real store. You can drop things off at home and they will
stay there until you return to pick them up. The interface is exactly
the same as a store, but there is no payment.

Now move to the staircase, represented by the ">" symbol, and press
">", to go down the stairs. At this point, you are in the dungeon. Use
the "l" command to look around. Note that you are standing on a
staircase leading back to town. Use the "<" command to take the stairs
back to town. You may find that any townspeople that were here before
have disappeared and new ones have appeared instead. Now use the ">"
command to go back down the stairs into the dungeon. You are now in a
different part of the dungeon than you were in before. The dungeon is
so huge, once you leave one part of the dungeon, you will never find
it again.

Now look at the screen. Your character will most likely be at the end
of a corridor surrounded by eight walls and with a floor in the other
direction. If you are not at the end of a corridor, keep going back up
to the town and back down into the dungeon until you are.  You could
move down the corridor's floors, one square at time, but the game
provides a way, called "running", to move many squares until there's a
choice to be made about where to go or something interesting appears
or happens. Try that now: press "." and then the direction key that
would move you to the empty floor (on most systems, you can press and
hold Shift before pressing the direction key as a shortcut for the two
key sequence of "." followed by a direction).

When your character stops, use "l" to look around to see what stopped
your character.  It could be a closed door, "+", which you can open by
moving into it.  It could be rubble, ":", blocking the path. You can
clear that by tunneling: "T" followed by a direction key to indicate
which square to dig out (on many systems, pressing and holding Control
followed by the direction key also works; that invokes the "alter"
command which can be used to dig, open doors, and other things).

It could be an object, represented by a punctuation symbol that does
not look like a wall, floor, closed door, or an open or broken door,
"'".  In that case, moving onto the object and then pressing "g" will
pick up the item. If the item on the floor matched something in your
inventory or the object is gold or gems, "$", your character will pick
it up automatically.

A monster could have stopped the run.  Most monsters are represented
by letters, but some look enough like objects, that they are
represented by a punctuation symbol.  When in doubt, use "l" to look
at something to know what's there. If a monster stopped the run, you
can attack it by moving next to it and then moving into it. Keep
moving into the monster until you kill the monster, the monster runs
away, or your character dies.  If your character dies, start a new
game. If the monster dies, it may have dropped one or more objects.
You can pick those up by moving onto the object and then press "g".

The run could have stopped when a corridor branched into two or more
corridors or because you have entered a room, empty space perhaps with
some internal walls. At this depth, rooms are almost always lit, and
you will be able to see parts beyond the one square radius illuminated
by your torch.  Corridors are dark, and, unless there is a lit room at
the end, all you will see is what is lit by your light source.

Now use the movement keys to explore the dungeon. As your character
moves around, you will notice that the screen keeps displaying some of
the grids that she has seen.  Think of this as a kind of "map"
superimposed on the world itself, the player can see the entire map,
but the character can only see those parts of the world which are
actually nearby. If the character gets near the edge of the "map"
portion of the screen the entire map will scroll to show a new portion
of the world. If the game's window can display 80 by 24 characters,
only about ten percent of a typical dungeon level can be seen by the
player at one time.  Without moving, you can use the "L" command to
look at other portions of the map (it is also possible with look
command, "l"; see the targeting section of the manual for more details
on that).  Use the "R" key, then return, to force your character to
"rest" until she has recovered from any damage she incurs while
attacking monsters. Use the "M" key to see the entire dungeon level at
once, and hit escape when done. If your food rations are still at
index "a" in your inventory, press "E", "a" to eat some food. If your
oil is still at index "b" in your inventory, and there is a monster
nearby, press "v", "b", "'" to throw a flask of oil at the nearest
monster. To drop an item from your inventory, press "d" plus the index
of that item. You can use the '^X' key to quit and save the game.

You now know enough to play a quick game of Angband. There is a lot
more for you to learn, including how to interpret information about
your character, how to create different kinds of characters, how to
determine which equipment to wield/wear, how to use various kinds of
objects, and how to use the more than fifty different commands
available to your character. The best resource for learning these
things is the manual that includes this demo. The in-game help, which
you access by pressing "?", does have a list of the commands with the
key and very brief description for each.
