29. Glossary
In short: the words used in RPG Saga Engine, its editor tools and this manual, in plain language. Terms in italics inside an explanation have their own entry. Each group ends with the chapter that explains it in depth.
29.1 Battle words
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Battle mode | How a battle is played. Every encounter names its mode, and the player does not choose it. The modes are Tactics, Free Tactics, ATB, Turn-based (by round or by timeline) and Action (real time). |
| Tactics (grid Tactics) | Turn-based battles on a square grid laid over your level. Tiles have height, units have a facing, and position matters (flanking, high ground, line of sight). Turn order follows CT, and each turn is paid with AP. |
| CT (Charge Time) | The Tactics turn counter. Every unit fills its CT at its own speed, and when it reaches the threshold the unit takes a turn. A turn that did less costs less CT, so the unit comes back sooner. |
| AP (Action Points) | The budget of one Tactics turn. Moving and acting both cost AP, in any order. |
| ATB (Active Time Battle) | Classic menu battles in which each character has a time bar that fills up. When it is full the character can act. The party and the enemies stand in rows facing each other. |
| Wait / Active | The two ATB time settings. In Wait (the default) time stops while you choose in a menu. In Active it keeps running. |
| Turn-based | Classic menu battles without time bars. Two styles: Round-based (everyone acts once per round, fastest first) and CTB (timeline) (a strip where fast units come around more often and slow abilities delay the next turn). |
| Free Tactics (Live Tactics) | Turn-based tactics without a grid: units move any distance in meters within their budget, on the live map. It is also the form every battle takes in co-op. |
| Action battle | Real-time combat on the live map, from sword fights to shooters, with a combat component, a camera rig and its own AI. |
| Classic battle | An ATB or turn-based battle (the menu-based modes). |
| Rows (front / back) | Positions in a classic battle. By default the back row deals and takes half melee physical damage, and some abilities hit a whole row. |
| Facing | The direction a Tactics unit looks. Attacks from the side or behind hit harder and more often. |
| Flank | Attacking from the side or back of a unit, or with an ally on its other side. |
| Line of sight | Whether anything blocks the view between the user and the target. Ranged abilities may need it. |
| Deployment tiles | The tiles where the player places units before a Tactics battle starts. |
| Encounter | One battle: its mode, enemies, levels, rewards and rules. A data asset. |
| Encounter pool | A list of enemies a progression zone draws random groups from, including rare elite groups. |
| Random encounter area | A volume in the level where classic battles start from time to time while the player walks. |
| Visible enemies / spawner | Enemies that roam the level. Touching one starts its battle. A spawner places and respawns them. |
| Tactics zone | The actor that marks where a Tactics battle happens on your level. Its grid is measured once (Bake Grid) and drawn during the battle. |
| Bake Grid | Measuring the level under a Tactics zone: which tiles are walkable and how high each is. |
| ATB stage | The actor that marks where a classic battle happens: the two sides' slots and the battle camera. |
| Battle director | The actor that runs one battle site (or one live or Action battle) and knows which encounter it fights. |
| Battle site | A Tactics zone with its director, trigger and optionally a classic stage next to it. |
| Mode override | A session-wide rule that fights an encounter in another mode, using a copy of the encounter. |
| Status | A lasting effect on a unit (poison, haste, protect). |
| Element | The kind of damage (fire, ice, holy). Units can be weak to, resist, be immune to or absorb it. |
| Resource | A spendable value such as HP, MP or Resonance. Your foundation decides which exist. |
| Adaptive difficulty | The enemies get smarter or make more mistakes depending on how the player did over several battles. Stats and rewards never change. |
| Intelligence | The enemy AI's skill, from 0 to 1, kept separately per battle family. Adaptive difficulty moves it within limits you set per zone or encounter. |
| Utility AI | The decision method of the enemy AI: every possible action gets a score from weighted considerations (scorers) and the best is chosen, with plausible mistakes at low intelligence. |
| Scorer | One consideration of the utility AI. A custom scorer adds a behaviour without touching the AI. |
See Battle fundamentals, Grid Tactics, ATB and turn-based, Free Tactics (Live), Action battles and Enemy AI and adaptive difficulty.
29.2 Characters and content
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Hero / party member | A main character. Plays in every battle mode. |
| Recruitable unit | A secondary character recruited during the game, who fights in Tactics battles only. |
| Enemy | A character controlled by the AI. |
| Guest | A character who joins for a while with fixed equipment the player cannot change. Not to be confused with a guest player in co-op. |
| Class | What a character is: stat growth by level, the abilities it learns and the equipment it may use. Characters keep their class for the whole game. |
| Ability | Anything a unit does in battle: attack, spell, skill, item use. One ability works in every battle mode, with rules per mode. |
| Item | Consumables, equipment, key items and readable documents. One inventory for the whole game. |
| Key item | An item used to solve puzzles or move the story on. It cannot be sold or used up by accident. |
| Pact | The summon system. A Pact gives a hero affinities, extra abilities and a summon, a temporary unit the player controls. |
| Resonance | The resource Pact summons cost. It builds up during battle. |
| Look / appearance | How a character looks: which body preset and which parts, colors and variants. |
| Body preset | A named body: skeletal mesh, animation Blueprint, anim set, scale and attachment points. Many looks share one. |
| Anim set | The list of animations a body uses: idle, walk, run, hits, knock-out, victory, attacks, casting. |
| Animation style | A group of clips for one way of fighting, built by the Animation & FX Library. |
| Presentation | How an ability looks and sounds: animation, effects, sounds, camera, projectile, impact. Separate from its rules. |
| Character pack | A set of character models and animations from a store, made usable by the importer. |
| Speaker | Who says a dialog line: a name, a color and a portrait. |
| Portrait | A character's face picture for dialogs and menus. |
| Growth Board | A board of nodes (stat boosts, passives, abilities, gates) the player opens by spending board points. One of the progression systems. |
| Equipment mastery | Won battles give mastery points to an equipped weapon or armor, which then teaches its abilities for good. |
See Characters and party, Progression, Abilities and statuses, Items, inventory and economy and Character visuals and animation.
29.3 Story and world
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Story flag | A yes/no or number value that remembers what happened. Saved with the game. |
| Condition | A question about the game state (has the item, flag has a value, character is in the party). Dialogs, quests, puzzles, abilities and encounters use the same conditions. |
| Effect | A change to the game state (set a flag, give an item, recruit a character, start a battle, start a dialog). The same effects work everywhere. |
| Conditions & Effects | The one content language shared by dialog, quests, puzzles, interactions, shops and encounters. |
| Dialog | A conversation of lines, choices, branches and effects, edited in the visual dialog editor. |
| Quest | A goal with stages and objectives, shown in the journal and the tracker. |
| Puzzle | A world mechanism (locked door, code lock, item combination) built from conditions and effects. |
| Save point | A place where the player saves. A consumable save item can also save almost anywhere except in battles, scenes, dialogs and no-save areas. |
| No-save zone | A volume where saving is blocked, for example before a boss. |
| Progression zone | A part of the world with a level range: which enemies live there, how strong they are, what loot is worth. Used by random battles, populate tools and balance tools. |
| Area map / minimap | The map of a level and the small map on the HUD, generated with Generate Map. |
| Travel / zone exit | Moving between maps. In co-op the host's travel takes everyone along. |
| Bestiary | The in-game book of enemies the player has met. |
| Card game | An optional collectible card minigame with NPC opponents. |
| Interactable | Anything in the world the player can use: doors, chests, levers, signs. |
See Story, dialog and quests, Exploration and World building.
29.4 Editor words
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| RPG Saga Studio | The editor window where you make your game step by step, in four layers. |
| Layer | One of the Studio's four levels: Foundation, Archetypes, Content, World. |
| Foundation | The base rules of your game: names, stats and resources, formulas, elements, equipment slots, the battle menu, battle modes, progression and money. |
| Foundation preset | A ready foundation to start from: JRPG Classic, Tactics, Dark Fantasy, Sci-fi RPG, Post-apocalyptic, Steampunk or Empty. |
| Game Terms | The game's vocabulary on screen ("Party", "Magic", "Lv"), written by the foundation and read by every screen. A text uses {Term.<Id>} to follow it. |
| Archetype | A template you create content from. Content made from it follows it for every field you did not change. |
| Variant (child archetype) | An archetype derived from another one. |
| Template (plugin asset) | An asset that ships in the plugin. The Studio never edits it in place: it makes a copy in your project. |
| Starter set | The complete, balanced example content that ships with the plugin. |
| Configurator | One window with every setting of the framework, grouped and searchable, with validation and tools. |
| Rules profile | A data asset that overrides some rules (battle, grid, AI) for one zone, battle or boss, or the whole game. |
| Profile section | A settings class that a rules profile may override. |
| Validate All Data | A check of every setting and data asset. Results open in the Message Log. |
| Wizard | A short form that creates a valid, ready-to-use data asset. |
| Content Import | Creating and updating data from spreadsheets or JSON, with a dry run first. |
| Dry run | A pass that reports everything an import would do, field by field, without changing anything. |
| AI pack | Prompt files generated from your project so an AI assistant can write content the importer accepts. |
| Battle simulator | Plays battles without graphics, very fast, to measure win rates and battle length. |
| Balance My Campaign | The tool that simulates every encounter of a campaign, flags what is off and proposes fixes. |
| Progression Designer | The tool that plans levels, experience and money across zones. |
| Test room | A small map with a smoke test that exercises one area of the framework. |
| Smoke test / smoke script | A short script of console commands and waits that plays a room and fails when something does not happen. |
| Battle launcher | A development panel that starts any encounter in any mode with a chosen party, rules, AI and seed. |
| Headless | Running without rendering, for simulations and automation. |
| Commandlet | A command-line run of the editor (-run=RSE...) for automation and build machines. |
| Blueprint API | Every system's functions and events as Blueprint nodes under RPG Saga. It is frozen: shipped nodes are never removed or renamed. |
See Core concepts, Game foundation and archetypes and Editor tools.
29.5 Architecture words
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| RSECore | The logic module: data, rules, state and simulation, with no actors, rendering, UI or input. |
| RSE | The presentation and world module: actors, camera, input, UI, exploration. |
| RSEEditor | The editor module: the Studio, wizards, importers, visual editors, validation. |
| RSEOnline, RSENet | The session module and the co-op transport module. |
| RSEGAS, RSEStateTree, RSECommonUI | Optional bridges: Gameplay Ability System characters, StateTree nodes for the AI, and a Common UI host for the screens. |
| Data-driven | Content lives in data assets and tables, not code. New content is new data. |
| Primary Data Asset | The base type of content definitions. Its PrimaryAssetId is the stable id that saves refer to. |
| Developer Settings | A settings class under Project Settings → RPG Saga Engine, saved in Config/Default*.ini. |
| CVar | A console variable. The framework's debug switches are named RSE.*. |
| Gameplay Tag | A hierarchical name (for example an element or a story flag) used to identify content without strings in code. |
| Native tag | A tag declared in C++ because code reads it directly. |
| Extension point | A base class you subclass in Blueprint or C++ to add behaviour: a custom condition, effect, scorer, reaction, interactable, menu entry or handler. |
| Custom (Blueprint) | The name of the Blueprint-friendly base of conditions, effects, ability effects and presentation cues. |
| Policy class | A setting that holds a replaceable class deciding a rule, such as the leash or the co-op encounter conversion. |
| Feature toggle | A switch in Features that stops a whole system from being created. |
| Seed stream | A named source of reproducible random numbers derived from the world seed. |
| Serializable state | Runtime state kept in plain structs that refer to content by id, so it can be saved and replicated. |
| State section | One named block of serializable state: the unit of saving and of replication. |
| Save backend | The storage behind saving: files, the platform's save system, or your own. |
See Extending the plugin and Save and load.
29.6 Online, co-op and platform words
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Session | One hosted game that players find or are invited to and join. |
| Provider | An online service behind the session interface: LAN, Steam, Epic Online Services, or your own class. |
| LAN | The local network. Hosting and joining on LAN needs no account. |
| Lobby | The screen and data where players see the session, the players and their characters before and during play. |
| Listen server | A host who plays and serves the game at once. Co-op uses it, with no dedicated server. |
| Host / guest | The host's machine runs the game logic. Guests show its state and send actions. |
| Authority | The machine that runs the game logic: the host, or the only player in single player. |
| Command | A small serializable action sent through the command bus and checked by a handler. |
| Command bus | The one path every player action takes, the same in single player, on the host and on a guest. |
| Handler | The class or function that validates and applies one kind of command. |
| Instigator | The player who sent a command, set by the host and never by the client. |
| Leash | The distance guests may roam from the host or the group before they are brought back. |
| Companion AI | The AI that drives a party member no player controls. |
| Slot | A player's place in the session: 0 is the host, 1 to 3 are guests. |
| Device profile | An engine profile of console variables for a device. The framework switches to the Steam Deck profile at start on a Deck. |
| Scalability level | The quality level the player picks: Low, Medium, High or Epic. |
| Content budget | An edit-time limit on a category of assets, such as triangles or texture size. |
| Performance budget | The limits a benchmark capture is checked against: frame rate, 1% low, GPU time, draw calls, memory. |
| 1% low | The frame rate of the slowest 1% of frames. |
| Platform user | The engine's idea of who is playing on a device, used for per-user saves and sign-out handling. |
| Tier (mobile) | Low, Mid or High: a mobile quality level with its own device profile and budget. Not verified on a device. |
| Touch layout | A data asset describing on-screen controls and gestures for one moment of play. |
See Co-op and online and Platforms and performance.
29.7 Localization words
| Term | Meaning | |
|---|---|---|
| Localization target | A set of texts the engine gathers and translates together. The plugin has one (RPGSagaEngine) and your project has its own. | |
| Culture | A language and region code such as ro, de or pt-BR. | |
| Gather | The engine step that collects every text of source and assets into a target's manifest and .po files. | |
| Translate with AI | The tool that exports texts for an AI assistant, validates the answers, merges them and compiles the language. | |
| Chunk | One file of texts, sized for one AI request. | |
| Glossary (translation) | A table of your content names, so the AI translates them the same way everywhere. | |
| Placeholder | A marker inside a text, such as {Name} or <em>, that must survive translation. | |
| Plural block | A pattern such as `{N} | plural(one=card,other=cards)` that gives a text for each plural category of a language. |
| Compile | Turning a .po into the .archive and .locres files the game loads. |
See Localization.