Glossary

On this page you can find terms and words related to Sc2gears.

A

Google Ads

Action list: The action list is the list of actions of a replay issued by the players. It is located under the Charts in the Replay analyzer.

Action sequence: Action sequence is a subsequent select+command pairs without being interrupted by other commands or by a specific time break, and consists of at least 2 select+command pairs. For example: select+move+select+move+..., another: hotkey select+attack+hotkey select+attack+.... Action sequences are measured and visualized on the "Action sequences" chart of the Replay analyzer. These sequences are presented as bars, where the width of the bar is the duration of the sequence, the height of the bar is the average execution speed of the sequence in pairs/sec.

Alert repetition interval: In the APM alert if your APM stays below the alert level for a specified time, the APM alert can be repeated periodically. The time period is defined by this setting.

Aliases: Player and map aliases can be defined. If a player has multiple names (for example the StarCraft II name change feature was used, or a player has multiple accounts with different names), their different names can be enumerated, and multi-replay analysis will summarize statistics found for the different names of the player. Map names are stored in the local of the client who saved the replay, so map names can occur with different names. These can be enumerated, and all map name occurrences will be replaced to the one the user provides. Moreover the user will be able to search replays by the provided map alias too. You can also use this feature to display map names that are not exist. For example if you want to display the map name "Lost Temple" as "LT", you can provide a line in the map aliases text area: "LT, Lost Temple".

AMM: See "AutoMM".

Animate: To animate means to play the replay in Sc2gears. See "Animator".

Animator: It's a feature of the Replay analyzer which "plays" the replay. Playing means iterating over the actions of the replay with a changable speed, and automatically update the charts to reflect the state of the game at the current time of the playing.

Anti-aliasing: Anti-aliasing controls whether or not the geometry rendering methods will attempt to reduce aliasing (distortion) artifacts along the edges of shapes. A typical anti-aliasing algorithm works by blending the existing colors of the pixels along the boundary of a shape according to the estimated partial pixel coverage of the shape. You can read more about it here.

APM: It's an acronym for Actions Per Minute: it tells how many actions are issued during a period of 1 minute. Higher APM means a player is more active during the game. More: APM Types, APM on Wikipedia, APM on Liquipedia.

APM Alert: APM Alert is a feature of Sc2gears that lets you know when your APM is too low while you play.

APM Alert level: The APM threshold to alert when your APM drops below this value. You can set the alert level according to your APM and what you want to reach.

APM warm-up time: In the beginning of games there are usually less things to do. If you don't spam (or you don't want to spam) at the beginning of your games, you can set an APM warm-up time: when a game starts, you will hear no alert during this time even if your APM drops or stays below the alert level.

Approximation: Charts are assembled from a series of data points. Approximation specifies how to connect these points. The simplest and fastest solution is to connect them with straight lines. A much pleasant (but a calculation intensive) solution is to approximate the points with properly connected many mathematical cubic functions.

Authorization key: Sc2gears communicates with the Sc2gears Database server using an Authorization key instead of your password. The authorization key is a secret key known only to its owner and to the Sc2gears Database. More: Sc2gears Database

AutoMM: It's a game type and it stands for "Automatic/Anonymous Match Making". You can read more about it here.

Auto-saved reps: It's a fixed, default replay source which contains the replay auto-save folder.

Average spawning ratio: It is the ratio of the time of a Hatchery being injected and the time from the first injection till the last action of the player. The higher the better, the optimal best value is 100%. More: Main Building Control Chart

Average injection gap: It is the average of the time gaps between Larva injections of a Hatchery. The smaller the better, the optimal best value is 0 sec. The time after the last injection is excluded. More: Main Building Control Chart

C

Camera areas: Camera areas are areas having a transitional color from black to pink depending on the amount of time the players were looking at that area. The area with the most time looked at gets the brightest color. The Map view chart can visualize the Camera areas of the replay as a background.

Custom date and time formats: The date and time formats are part of the language files: each language can define its own date and time formats. If the user wants different formats, they can be overridden by defining new, custom formats.

Custom portrait: Custom portrait is an image of your choice to be displayed as the portrait picture next to your player name in the Replay analyzer and in the Profile dialog. More: Custom portraits

E

EAPM: EAPM stands for Effective APM. EAPM measures the amount of useful/effective commands that would be given by a player in 1 minute. More: APM Types

"Event based" new replay detection: If this method is selected, the Replay auto-saver will not scan periodically the auto-replay folders, it will use OS services to be notified when a new replay is saved therefore it uses no CPU resource.

F

Favored player list: It is a comma separated list of player names. Players and their teams being part of this list will be put ahead of others in the Replay analyzer and when applying name templates.

Frame: Time is measured in frames inside StarCraft II. It is the basic unit of time and game calculation. On Normal game speed 1 second contains 64 frames.

Full name: See "Full player name".

Full player name: Many players can have the same name in StarCraft II even on the same gateway. Only the name does not identify a player. But each player has a unique ID assigned by the Battle.net server. A full player name adds extra info to the name which along with the name will uniquely identify the player. The full player name can be acquired if you right click on a player in the Replay analyzer, and choose "Copy full name...". Example: "SCIIGears/EU/1/206154". In this full name "SCIIGears" is the name of the player, "EU" is the gateway identifier (Europe), "1" is the battle.net sub-id (region identifier), "206154" is the Battle.net id. Full names can also be found on the Game info tab in the Replay analyzer. Full names are used in the "Full player name" search field in the Replay search, and on the Aliases tab of the Miscellaneous settings dialog.

G

Game time: The time measurement (elapsed time) in StarCraft II depends on the game speed. It is equivalent with the real time if the game speed is Normal. On faster game speeds (fast and faster) the game time is faster than the real time. On slower game speeds (slow and slower) the game time is slower than the real time.

Gaming session: A Gaming session is a sequence of games where the time break between games is not greater than a specified limit. The Multi-replay analysis of Sc2gears analyzes your gaming sessions, and calculates statistics for the games based on their position in the gaming sessions. You can see these on the Gaming sessions tab under the player details.

Gas RSR: See "Resource Spending Rate (RSR)".

Global hotkeys: Sc2gears has a Global hotkeys feature which if enabled allows you to control Sc2gears while you're in StarCraft II (or from any other applications).

Granularity: Charts are assembled from a series of data points. Granularity defines how close (or far) should be these data points from each other. Information that the chart is painted from will be aggregated/summarized between the data points specified by the granularity.

Grid: Grid is a feature of the Replay analyzer which allows painting a custom grid (time markers) on the charts. It can be custom configured or automatically configured for some common periodic tasks like Spawn Larva, Calldown MULE or Chrono boost.

H

Hot points: Hot points are the target points of the actions with the colors of the players issuing them. The Map view chart can visualize the Hot points of the replay as a background.

Hot areas: Hot areas are areas having a transitional color from black to pink depending on the number of hot points inside them compared to other hot areas. The area with the most hot points gets the brightest color. The Map view chart can visualize the Hot areas of the replay as a background.

Hotkeys: In Sc2gears hotkeys refer to the actions where you assign, update or select a group of units by numbers. You can assign units with CTRL+NUMBER, recall the group by pressing the NUMBER, add units to a group by pressing SHIFT+NUMBER. The Hotkeys chart visualizes the usage of hotkeys.

I

Inaction: Inaction is an "action type" which refers to "no action". It includes actions that are not issued by the player (for example a hotkeyed Hatchery transforms into a Lair) or does not have an effect on the game (move screen/camera).

Injection gap: See "Average injection gap".

Ink flow rate: When the mouse is idle for a specific amount of time, the Mouse print recorder pours ink on the mouse print image. The longer the mouse is idle for, the bigger the spot will be. Ink flow rate specifies the amount of ink poured on the image. It is given in pixel/sec. For example if the flow rate is 200 pixel/sec and the mouse is idle for 4 seconds, the area of the spot will be 200 pixel/sec * 3 sec = 800 pixels (which will be a filled oval with a radius of about 16 pixels).

L

League match-up: League match-up contrary to the race match-up contains the league letters of players instead of their race letters. While a race match-up of PvT means Protoss versus Terran, a league match-up of SvG for example means Silver versus Gold.

Leet: Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, is an alternative alphabet for the English language. Read more about it on Wikipedia.

M

Macro APM: An APM value calculated from macro actions. See "Micro/Macro APM".

Micro APM: An APM value calculated from micro actions. See "Micro/Macro APM".

Micro/Macro APM: APM is calculated from all the actions of players. Micro and Macro APMs are calculated from a subset of the actions. Each action is either micro or macro so Micro APM+Macro APM = APM. More: APM Types

Mineral RSR: See "Resource Spending Rate (RSR)".

MD5 hash: MD5 hash is a short, fixed-length digest of binary data with variable length, a replay file in our case. The MD5 hash will differ for replays with different content. Sc2gears can insert the MD5 hash of a replay to the file name with the /h name template symbol. Doing so will extremely speed up replay search and Multi-replay analysis for cached replays. Read more about MD5 on Wikipedia.

Mouse practice game: This is a built-in game inside Sc2gears available from the Tools menu. This game tests your mouse speed and accuracy. Comes with an integrated Top Scores table (which is stored in the Sc2gears Database).

Mouse print: It is the track of mouse movements. It is a data series of mouse coordinates and timestamps. Also check out Mouse print recorder.

Mouse print image: It is the image of a mouse print, the mouse print drawn on a canvas to visualize it. Every movement is visualized with a straight line. Idle mouse is visualized with spots where the area of the spots is proportional with the mouse idle time. Also check out Mouse print recorder.

Mouse print recorder: It is both a tool and a service-feature of Sc2gears. It can be used to record, save, load, customize and display various information about mouse prints. Details: Mouse print recorder

Mouse warm-up time: Used by the Mouse print recorder at the beginning of recordings: mouse warm-up time specifies a time limit so ink will not be poured during this time.

Multi-replay analysis: It's a feature of Sc2gears. You can analyze multiple replays at once, and Sc2gears will show you all kinds of statistics for the analyzed replays: time development charts, weighted average APMs, match-up statistics, map statistics, Build order statistics etc. More: Multi-replay analysis

N

Name template: The Name template engine uses a name template when renaming replays. The name template defines what the name will be. It is a string which may contain any texts and special symbols. Symbols will be substituted with dynamic texts and values taken from the replay. Some symbols have parameters. For example the player name symbol has a parameter: the player index whose name to be substituted. More: Name template engine

Name template engine: The Name template engine is responsible to generate new names for replays based on a Name template. More: Name template engine

Navigation bar: The navigation bar is the bar where you can see the list of internal windows, your replay sources and replay lists (that are saved in their default folder) in grouped. You can click on any of it and the associated internal window will be focused. You can double click on replay sources and replay lists to open them, or your can right click on them to see more options.

O

On-Top APM display dialog (In-game current APM): This is an always on top dialog which shows your current APM while you're in a game. This dialog is only visible if you use the "Fullscreen (Windowed)" or the "Windowed" display mode.

On-Top Game info dialog (In-game info panel): This is an always on top dialog which shows the best leagues and the APM values of the players of your last game without having to ALT+TAB out or having to check them one-by-one. This dialog is only visible if you use the "Fullscreen (Windowed)" or the "Windowed" display mode.

Overlay charts: Overlay charts are charts on top of the "main" chart in on the Charts tab in the Replay analyzer. Overlay charts are synchronized to the main chart, they can be resized, moved, closed, maximized, and they are always on top. Overlay charts are displayed in child dialogs of the Replay analyzer, so all opened replays can have their own and different overlay charts. Any chart type can be enabled by clicking on the "Overlay charts" link above the main chart.

P

Player info block: The Player info block is part of the name template syntax.The Player info block is a special symbol: it has an opening and closing part (< and >) and some other symbols can be used inside of it without the player index parameter. When applying the name template to a replay, the template engine will iterate over all players of the replay and insert them to the position of the player info block, grouped by teams. More: Name template engine

Player popup menu: It's a popup menu that appears if you right click on the player box (player name, profile icon, best league icons) in the Replay analyzer or on the players table (Players and Playmates tabs) in the Multi-replay analysis. It offers you various tasks to be performed on the player. The offered menu items might differ based on which module it is shown (context sensitive). Plugins can also add items to the Player popup menu.

Plugin: Plugins are software components that are developed independently from Sc2gears by 3rd party developers and vendors.You can read more about them here: Plugin interface

"Polling" new replay detection method: If this method is selected, the Replay auto-saver will periodically scan the auto-replay folders for new replays.

Pre-defined lists: There are numerous places in Sc2gears where you can enter a text into a text field. For example when you want to search replays for a specific map, a match-up or a player, when you want to filter the action list or when you provide a name template for renaming replays. This is where pre-defined lists come in to the picture: pre-defined lists provide you a default option list for you to choose from. You can input your custom text, or you can select one from the offered list. After you select, you can edit/modify it of course. You can also edit the pre-defined list: you can add/remove elements, you can rearrange the elements or change them.

Profile cache: Sc2gears manages a profile cache to minimize the profile info queries and to minimize the time of showing profile info in the Replay analyzer and in the Player profile dialogs.

Profile info validity time: Profile data is automatically cached by Sc2gears to reduce your network traffic and the load of the profile data provider server. If a cached profile is needed, it will not be queried again from the server but rather it will be read from the profile cache. The validity time tells how long a cached profile can be used without re-querying it from the server. If a cached profile is needed after its validity time has passed, it will be displayed immediately, but in the background the profile will be queried again and the displayed profile will be refreshed when the new profile data is ready.

R

Redundancy: Redundancy is the ratio of the actions that are considered ineffective. Redundancy = ineffective actions / all actions * 100 % = (APM - EAPM) / APM * 100%. For example 20% redundancy means that 20 actions out of 100 are considered ineffective. More: APM Types

Replay analyzer: It's a feature of Sc2gears. Replay analyzer operates on a replay, extracts info and the player actions from it, and visualizes them in different, customizable charts. Shows the in-game chat, also provides a translation bar to translate the chat messages.

Replay auto-save: It's a feature of Sc2gears. Sc2gears automatically saves all your replays to a separate folder, and renames the replay based on a name template you provide. More: Replay analyzer

Replay cache: Sc2gears manages an internal replay cache to dramatically speed up replay searches, multi-replay analysis and renaming replays. The user does not have to do anything: managing the replay cache is automatic.

Replay operations popup menu: It's a popup menu that appears if you right click on the replays list in the Replay search module or on the charts in the Replay analyzer. It offers you various tasks to be performed on the selected replays. The offered menu items might differ based on which module it is shown (context sensitive). Plugins can also add items to the Replay operations popup menu.

Replay source: A replay source is a set of replay files and folders that (may) contain replays. A replay source denotes a set of replays that are either explicitly added to the replay source or is contained in one of the folders or sub-folders that are part of the replay source. By default these replay sources are saved in the "User content\Replay sources" folder inside Sc2gears.

Replay list: A replay list is a list of replays saved in a standard CSV file. By default these lists are saved in the "User content\Replay lists" folder inside Sc2gears.

Resource Spending Rate (RSR): Resource spending rate tells how fast a player is spending his/her resources. It's measurement unit is 1/min. For example a value of 1000/min means the player would spend 1000 mineral/gas in 1 minute if he would keep the resource spending rate constant. There are 2 types of RSR for the 2 types of resources: Mineral RSR and Gas RSR. The RSR values are calculated and visualized on the "Resource Spending Rate" chart of the Replay analyzer which draws 2 separate graphs for each player: Mineral RSR and Gas RSR.

RSR: See "Resource Spending Rate (RSR)".

S

Sc2gears Database: Sc2gears Database is a secure server to store ALL your replays and other related files privately. More: Sc2gears Database

SC2 auto replay folder: The folder where StarCraft II automatically saves your last replays.

SC2 auto reps: It's a fixed, default replay source which contains the SC2 auto-replay folder.

SC2 maps folder: The folder where StarCraft II stores the map files.

SMPD file: SMPD is an acroym for Sc2gears Mouse Print Data. It is a file storing the binary data of a mouse print. Details: Mouse print recorder

Spawning ratio: See "Average spawning ratio".

StarCraft 2 installation folder: The folder where StarCraft II has been installed to (the folder which contains the "SarCraft II.exe" on Windows or the "StarCraft II.app" on MAC OS-X).

Start page: The internal window that appears on startup inside Sc2gears which shows tips, frequently used controls (like visit home page, open last replay, start StarCraft II) and news related to Sc2gears.

U

Unit Tier: The term originates from Warcraft 2 where the main building can be upgraded. The initial state is Tier 1, and 2 upgrades were possible. Units that become available after the upgrades are called Tier 2 and Tier 3 respectively. In StarCraft II the analogy stands with the Zerg race: you can upgrade you main buildings. The terminology was applied to other races as well to describe the different phases of the game. Tiers refer to how deep a player had gone into the tech tree, and places most units in a Tier. Units that become available after Tier 1 but before Tier 2 are referred to as Tier 1.5 (and same for Tier 2.5).

Classification of units

Tier 1: Zergling, Marine, Zealot

Tier 1.5: Roach, Baneling, Marauder, Reaper, Stalker, Sentry, Mothership Core

Tier 2: Hydralisk, Infestor, Mutalisk, Corruptor, Overseer, Swarm Host, Ghost, Hellion, Widow Mine, Immortal, Phoenix, Void Ray, Observer, Warp Prism

Tier 2.5: Siege Tank, Medivac, Viking, Banshee

Tier 3: Ultralisk, Brood Lord, Viper, Raven, Battlecruiser, Thor, Hellbat, Colossus, Mothership, Carrier, High Templar, Dark Templar, Tempest

W

Word Cloud: A Word Cloud is an image of input words arranged in a cloud formation where the words have different sizes based on their frequencies (or occurrences). Read more about it on Wikipedia.

X

XAPM: XAPM stands for eXtended APM. XAPM extends APM by including certain move screen actions (which moves the screen with at least a certain distance). More: APM Types