Markov Chain Update

Hello everyone,

I've been thrilled that people have been playing and enjoying this little game. Because I've had such a fun time developing this game, I thought I'd add a few things as a way to learn a bit about a few things I've never implemented before... namely: Markov Chains. I was shown this video by my professor, Alexander King, when he was giving me feedback on the game, and I thought, "Hey. I could probably do this."

As is made obvious by this game (and more obvious in this updated version of the game), I'm not a huge fan of the machine learning tech that is now commonly marketed as "AI", neither the image generation tools nor the text generating/processing tools. So, all of the text that the Markov tool in the game is based off of is written by me! Because of that and the time constraints I set for myself, the generated text is fairly limited and also generally makes no sense. But that's alright with me, I hope it's alright with you. 

Because of the way the text rolls out I had to make some larger updates to the UI, I hope that it isn't too clunky when compared to the very streamlined UI of the older version. 

Lastly, for anyone who has already played the game, there is a new secret ending. If you want a hint, feel free to leave a comment!

Without further ado, here is the full changelog. I hope I didn't miss anything. 

Markov Chain Update, 7/4/2025

• Added Markov Chain generated text that populates "sentences" rather than random words.
• Added a default and fantasy corpus that evolves over time as you write more words, depending on where in the game you are.
• Added spaces between the words to more accurately emulate the feeling of writing sentences. 
• Changed the text feed from vertical to horizontal, to more accurately represent what it would be like to write a sentence.
• Reorganized the UI generally into two drawers, on the left and the right. You can click the arrows to open/close them or press tab to open/close them at the same time. 
• Improved the formatting of numbers, including shortening numbers by formatting down once in the thousands (K) and millions (M).
• Changed the overall flow of the game, including moving the *Book Deal* later in the game (as it changes the corpus of the generated text) and refactoring some of the starting costs and increments. 
• Added 3 new "upgrades", two late game ones and one to buff AI. 
• Revised the AI rhetoric in the game, including adding a new quality "resource" that is affected by writers and AI. 
• Added a new late-game AI prevalence "resource" that leads to a new secret ending. 
• Added feedback for successfully completing a word and for making a mistake.  
• Added the ability to purchase the most recently purchased upgrade by pressing return/enter. 
• Improved stability and resolved some small bugs (also probably introduced some new bugs that I did not catch).