Glossary

This glossary lists important Unity and Unreal terms used across the guide.

Term	Engine	Meaning
Actor	Unreal	A level-placeable or spawnable gameplay object.
AIController	Unreal	A controller that possesses and directs AI pawns.
Blackboard	Unreal	Shared AI working memory used by Behaviour Trees.
Blueprint	Unreal	A reflected asset class that can define components, defaults, and visual scripting logic.
Character	Unreal	A Pawn subclass with built-in character movement support.
Component	Both	A reusable part that adds behaviour, data, or structure to another object.
Controller	Unreal	An object that possesses and directs a Pawn.
Data Asset	Unreal	An asset used to store structured data, often as a designer-editable alternative to code-only data containers.
Delegate	Unreal	Unreal's callback and event binding system.
Details Panel	Unreal	The editor panel used to inspect and edit reflected properties.
Enhanced Input	Unreal	Unreal Engine 5's modern input framework.
FName	Unreal	A lightweight name type used for identifiers and lookups.
FString	Unreal	Unreal's general-purpose string type.
FText	Unreal	Unreal's user-facing text type, designed for localisation.
GameMode	Unreal	The server-side class that defines rules, default classes, and match flow.
GameObject	Unity	A scene object that holds components.
GameState	Unreal	A replicated class that stores shared match state for clients.
Garbage Collection	Unreal	Engine-managed cleanup of unreachable UObject instances.
Level	Unreal	A map asset that contains placed actors and world content.
Mapping Context	Unreal	A group of input bindings in Enhanced Input.
MonoBehaviour	Unity	The base class commonly used for Unity gameplay scripts.
Pawn	Unreal	A possessable Actor, usually controlled by a player or AI controller.
Perforce	Both	A version-control system commonly used by larger Unreal teams.
PlayerController	Unreal	The class that represents player input and possession logic.
PlayerState	Unreal	A replicated class that stores per-player match data.
Reflection	Unreal	The engine system that exposes C++ classes, properties, and functions to the editor, Blueprints, serialization, and networking.
Scene	Unity	A collection of GameObjects loaded together.
Soft Reference	Unreal	An asset reference that can be loaded later instead of forcing an immediate hard dependency.
TArray	Unreal	Unreal's dynamic array template.
TObjectPtr	Unreal	A UE5 pointer wrapper commonly used for reflected UObject member references.
UFUNCTION	Unreal	A macro that exposes a function to Unreal systems such as Blueprints or RPCs.
UHT	Unreal	Unreal Header Tool, which processes reflected headers before C++ compilation.
UMG	Unreal	Unreal Motion Graphics, Unreal's main runtime UI system.
UObject	Unreal	The base class for many engine-managed objects.
UPROPERTY	Unreal	A macro that exposes a member variable to Unreal systems.
World	Unreal	The runtime world context that owns actors and gameplay state.