This Glossary will hopefully explain what certain terms or topics mean in a somewhat friendly or interesting way.
This is very much a work in progress.
Shortform of the word “Antibreather” to prevent spoilers.
An Antibreather is a creature with mechanical limbs resembling a combination of tentacles and knife-like objects.
While certainly unnerving, Antibreathers are non-hostile, and will attempt to flee as soon as they’re compromised or threatened.
For more information, visit the Antibreather page of the wiki.
Arirals [Ah-ree-ral] are cat-girl-like aliens.
They curse, have advanced full-body cloaking suits and cloaked ships, radioactive beam cannons, and six breasts.
They are separated into “Shorts” and “Talls”, the former being twice as strong as a human at about 6’ or so, and the latter being approximately 8x as strong and around 8’+.
More information can be found on the Ariral page of the wiki.
A state in which the player can not sleep, save, pause, or quit.
During Meta Paranoia, an event, location, object, or entity MUST be confronted, or a trigger must be met.
In rare circumstances, something causing Meta Paranoia may auto-resolve itself. An example is if an ‘A.B.’ is near, then leaves. (See ‘A.B.’ for more info.)
Many players use MP as a way to tell if they’re in proximal danger
…though that’s not always the case. :3
This happens when the game attempts to auto-save or when the player attempts to quicksave/backup save in a position, time, or event that disallows it.
The practical reason for this is to prevent the player from Softlocking themselves (see ‘Softlock’ for more info) at a point of importance, danger, or another volatile situation that would make it easy to do so.
While “Cannot save in midair” also exists, driving the ATV will cause Saves to give a SAVE ERROR: NULL instead.
(Technically, driving is a state of neither being on the ground nor in the air, and both at the same time. Yay physics.)
Any ‘tutorial’ or method of teaching the player by showing them what to do through actions or environment, rather than telling them through text.
Most functions are taught in the in-game Tutorial, while others that aren’t taught directly are done with these.
A ‘Softlock’ is a colloquial term created by gamers to denote a state in which you accidentally ‘lock’ yourself in a situation that is impossible to get out of normally, aside from resetting or loading an older save.
(Walking out-of-bounds, getting stuck in a hole that the devs left in, stuck in a quicksave death-loop, etc.)
The ‘Soft’ part comes from a technical point, and is due to the player’s actions being the cause of the problem.
If the game freezes, or if the game bugs out, causing you to be locked without your own doing, this is known as a ‘Hardlock’.