You stop digging.

So hey, first of all I'd just like to say thanks to all those involved in taking up the torch and resuming development on IVAN! I first played IVAN 0.50 about a trillion years ago and always thought it had a ton of potential, so imagine my delight to discover that the latest version was just three months ago. But anyway.

I'm seeing a weird behavior and I'm unsure if it's me or if it's a bug. I haven't once successfully used a pickaxe in this build (0.50.8). Even if I'm trying to dig into a regular old crummy wall in the UT, all I do is spend one turn and get "You stop digging." Screenshot attached.

Even if this is an expected behavior, it seems like I should be getting some more specific reason about why I can't dig. It seems more like I'm just failing to perform the action for some reason.

I'm a regular old Windows 7 user. Let me know if there's more info I can provide.

Edit: Here's some more info: I found a meteoric steel wall and tried digging that, and got a normal message informing me that the wall was way too hard for my pickaxe.

I think this is a known issue; at least, I've run into it. I don't remember how to correct it but I do remember it being very simple. The same issue also interferes with the 'w'alk command. Perhaps toggle numlock?

Yeah I think it's a bug in SDL2. Try toggling NumLock like Izzy said.

Welcome to the forums by the way Zeor!

Great, thanks, looks like toggling numlock did the trick. Sorry to pester over a known issue, but my search didn't turn up anything about it. Shrug. Thank you!

It is a known bug, lengthy discussion here: https://github.com/Attnam/ivan/issues/40

But thanks for the report and welcome!

Would it be worth stickying a "Known Bugs and Easy Fixes" thread?

We could stick something on the wiki? I don't know. But just out of curiosity, where do most of our visitors go when they visit the site? I imagine that most of them are playing IVAN currently and are looking to beat the game. Are they leafing through page after page on the wiki? Or do they spend all their time trawling through all our posts in search of our ancient wisdom on beating the game, and best techniques for getting past Jenny?

My question is where best to put info on known bugs and their workarounds to increase the likelihood that people will find it?

I looked through that Issues page on GitHub there but didn't find this pickaxe problem because I guess it was kind of a footnote under the 'g' key dealy which I never use. I think I only found this forum in my continued searching for any mention of the issue.

By the way I've also noticed a much higher rate of discovering artifacts in this version. I've found Saal'thul lying around three times in 20 games. Same thing with an artifact mace whose name I don't remember. Those and oil lamps; I've also found three or four genies. I mean my only frame of reference is a lot of games in 0.50, but it seems odd to me.

e: Apparently this is the forum's 27,000th post?

edit again: Three games later, there's Saal'thul again, hanging around in the UT. I feel like we have another issue here.

You might just be getting lucky, I'm not sure. I can't look at the source code (at least, not and understand it), but there's nothing wrong in the script files. The spawn rates are such that a carrot is 150 times more likely than a saal'thul, for any random item drop.

Hum. Yeah I guess those odds aren't insane. I've just definitely observed a sharp increase in the generation of good stuff in general - artifacts, arcanite helmets, ommel bone plate, etc. Maybe it's just me, iunno. I'll just keep it in mind as my sample size increases.

I definitely feel like the game goes on streaks where it gives you the same items over and over in consecutive games.

for a long time I did both before registering, your posts have made me laugh too many times and educated even more. IMO, dedicated enough players will go through everything and piece out each and every nibble of info..

Do we have a beginners guide anywhere? We ought to. Just something to help new players get past Jenny, addresses common issues, light on spoilers and scummy techniques and heavy on advice (such as "Plate armor is worthless, unless it came from Atavus.")

And then they join the forum!


I really like this idea

We have this. JoKe's guide is very well written, IMO.

It's also very spoiler-heavy and not really aimed at complete beginners, if we're talking about an IVAN 101.

Yeah, personally I'm not big on spoilers. Which probably explains why I'm kind of terrible. But I still have fun.

On that note, it is also possible that this perceived uptick in my finding good stuff is actually a side effect of my surviving longer on average. Hard to pin down cause/effect there.

Yeah I think that artifact discovery rate thing was just me having a bizarre run of consistent luck. And surviving into the gloomy caves more often.