private variables and commonace

I thought I saw a #define common ace private variables thing somewhere

and I assumed it was a single line you could put on the ace table to include private variables and all their basic functions

but now when I look through objects on the cvs that have private vars i don't see it

is there such a thing?

No, there's several places you need to add code to support private variables. Search the Sprite object source for 'private'.