Things have been pretty good - if a little slow, bordering on "dead". We don't often see new "regulars" (such as myself!) but we've had a few - some of which can code which is great!

I'm not sure how much work (if any) has been done on development as of yet but we have the tools in place over here.
I'll agree the game is functionally complete - in my opinion it only needs, say, more content than code. However there's interest to implement a post-petrus quest involving saving the your child (first born daughter/son item). Other than that Erno had a huge list of ideas we could work on.

As for the questions relating to where we got the source from - I wouldn't know, I'm comparatively new here (only been around since this forum rather than the past two) so you'd have to ask one of the big fish around here.
And yeah there was an IVANCon a while back, of which there are plenty of pictures in the gallery section.

Welcome back!

Spawn rate of Valdemar and Unarmed Combat can be fixed rather easily via script editing.
For the Valdemar, find these lines in item.dat under "potion":

SecondaryMaterialConfig = { 11, WATER, HEALING_LIQUID, OMMEL_URINE, POISON_LIQUID, VALDEMAR, ANTIDOTE_LIQUID, VODKA, TROLL_BLOOD, OMMEL_SWEAT, OMMEL_TEARS, SULPHURIC_ACID; }
  MaterialConfigChances = { 11, 75, 50, 5, 50, 10000, 10, 5, 25, 5, 5, 25; }

And change that "10000" to something more sensible. I'm not sure what the spawn rate was intended to be but seeing as it behaves almost identically to vodka you might as well set it to 5 just like vodka is.

As for the huge unarmed combat skill, find this line under "humanoid" in the char.dat file:

  KnownCWeaponSkills == UNARMED;
  CWeaponSkillHits == 19000;

Delete both of those.

And there you go - CVS without its inherent bugs.
You should probably download and use CVS as it has new things without huge differences like LIVAN and other variants have. For one, it has gas grenades which are always fun.
In the dwarf fortress sense of the word...

Autosave gone too?

Unfortunately anything that doesn't seem like a trap can also be a trap, meaning that pretty much the safest way to proceed is to treat the entire world like a trap.
At the very least you can count yourself lucky IVAN doesn't have things like, say, pre-determined ambushes full of hideous creatures which trigger upon entering a certain tile or taking a certain item, or things like DoomRL's lever which turns the entire floor into lava.

Well unless we wanted it to, now that we kinda have dev up.

Probably mirrored items, I believe there's a specific entry for chests containing huge mirrored loot.
That is to say, they'll disappear but you can make use of them while you can. Maybe some of the items aren't actually mirrored and others are? Only time will tell.

So far as I know, the only belt of levitation belongs to the sumo and the only other way to get one is with a wish.
Also yeah nuts are very rare and useless random items. Unless you're starving, I guess.

Eh, I'm learning Java and have done a little C (not C++) so I will see if I can help where I can and when I have time/motivation.
Note the learning part.

Ah, unless Ischaldirh had the foresight to wall himself into a tiny room, in which case Sherry runs around New Attnam violently exploding and getting pissed, much to the amusement of the locals.

Heheheh that's a secret. Lemme just say that the atomic mines I added in a while back do a little bit more than just explode now.

Heheh, I really like everyone entries so far!

SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.

I really like the idea of the vodka moat by the way. I initially tried to have her spawn in a room packed with atomic mines (from my Atomic IVAN) and wands of fireballs, but she still survived because apparently her head wasn't severed.
She then went to town on everyone.