'Not A Villain' Webcomic - Annie's sidestory continues

Annie Intro – 02

Annie is not a computer genius.

If you’re lost (or don’t remember), please see this side story to understand where Annie came from.

24 Comments

If I ever write a help file that bad, shoot me.

If it’s going to tell her she gave an invalid response, the LEAST it can do is list off what responses it would accept.

As a beginning programmer who receives programming assignments that take VERY little effort and are designed to be finished quickly, this is better than half of my error reporting.

Yeah, but a huge team of experienced software designers should be able to do better.

I mean, even the Dell website can automatically detect your hardware.

Despite teaching the newbie, this would actually be a great insight into how L.i.F.e works…

Poor Annie, it would be so confusing to be a nameless, storyless blob one day, and a side story main the next… Still love the idea of citizens and outsiders having completely different rules and rights in L.i.F.e.

Oh my, she didn’t even look what kind of brainsucking device she put on her head?

I’d say call tech support, but that’s like intrusting a complete stranger with your credit card.

I’m really sad that we chose such a dire back story for Annie. Hope things go well for her.

You.have to worry about food in L.i.F.e.?

“Invalid response”… One of the least helpful error messages possible… Yeah, that’s a world run by programmers.

Hey, I resent that remark. *Joke*

I don’t think it means food in LiFe but using LiFe to get food to your reality location. Notice how the next item is Transporters. Since the system knows that Annie is an Outsider and since most Outsiders probably have food problems and want to move to Cities, it is giving her a helpful menu.

Question: How did the system know what hairstyle to give Annie? Are there steps during the initial login process that we skipped? Or does the system assign appearance randomly?

I think the “blob sidestory” gave some idea. There was character creation stuff there.

With logic like that, it sounds to me like LIFE is brought to you by the federal government.

Well she better take off the headset at some point to eat in Real Life otherwise she wont be playing in L.I.F.E. for more than a few days. If she is a computer generated person then she shouldn’t be showing up in the system as using a headset.

The computer is showing a picture and seems to be good at interogating attached hardware. I’d just say yes to that question if ‘don’t know’ is an invalid response. a better UI probably could display a selection of choices and narrow it down by that.

Considering that she has probably not had any communication with the outside world for almost 2 years, gaining the ability to talk to someone and then loosing it because the stupid computer told you to take of the headset would probably drive her over the brink of insanity. Food won’t help her at that point.

What? Why would you think she hasn’t had any contact with anyone? In the previous strips, she was asked what her background was, and DIDN’T KNOW. Which suggests to me that either she’s not FROM reality, or she has amnesia.

Dudes! You’re insulting programmers, and IT’S NOT THEIR FAULT!! Remember? They’re all dead. Shame on all of you!

The author is (cheerfully?) describing what happens when you kill all of the programmers and the only people are left have no idea what they’re doing.

In other words, to get helpful help files, you need to have someone who knows the system write down some stuff that they think might be hard for new players. THEN you actually listen to new players struggle with the help file. Then you re-write the help file. Then you listen to more struggling. This is a cycle that only ends when the programmer’s boss says to stop.

Think about it for your own job. You have multiple degrees in something and you know it inside and out. And you’re told to write down instructions to guide new employees. It’s been so long since you’ve experienced the stumbling blocks of the very beginner that you literally have no clue what to write. This is why help files always start out so bad.

But now we have programmers who are barely trained and don’t have a clue what they’re doing sometimes. This is the blind trying to help the blind – when vision is a requirement.

I like that. That was very thought out and described well. Kudos.

that actually makes more sense as i read ur theory. but imagine being in a virtual reality like that and killing off the very ppl who can help you out lol

fear makes reason run away. or gets killed and eaten if fear is faster. which ever

Ok, fair enough. We don’t know if the hacker witch hunts happened before or after the development of L.i.F.e. We know L.i.F.e. was created after the Ending, because people were using the Game to connect, and it was decided to make a less hostile/competitive and more “lifelike” environment for people to socialize in. So if the hacker fiasco had already happened, there might not have been many experienced programmers around for the adaptation of the Game to L.i.F.e.

BUT– the Game already existed before the Ending, and character setup and launch had to be part of the Game. So this code should already have Ben written before the Ending and the hacker purge.

I write code, but most of my work is in usability testing and documentation, and unfortunately I have to say that the poor usability in this scene is completely believable. Most programmers, in my experience, are much more interested in creating new features than in documenting or improving the usability of existing features. In the worst cases, this develops into a defensive arrogance that the user should “RTFM” or just take the time to learn the software or buy a book or go to a class…. when fixing a few error messages and maybe providing a help prompt would avoid all that trouble.

Sorry, soapbox off. It’s just that I deal itch this kind of thing every day.

hahaha, I can relate. the experienced -do- think its easy since they know it. easy to forget that others don’t have your experience and that you either have to train them a little or give helpful guides. and both sides assume the other is just lazy XD. basically, we are all still kids who want things and don’t want to pay.

just gotta remind yourself to not expect better of others than you are at your worst and most experiences with others will be mostly refeshing ^^

I love Annie’s face in the last panel!

Not A Villain – A Webcomic

A webcomic about a reformed hacker in a virtual Reality.

Annie Intro – 02