Glossary

Glossary of important terms used in the Microservice Dungeon.

The most important domain terms of the Microservice Dungeon. Owner names the bounded context responsible for managing the term’s domain concept.

Term Owner Description
Bank account Trading The per-game account holding a player’s credits.
Black hole Map An object on the map that practically destroys any robot entering it.
Cargo hold Robot The limited storage a robot carries mined resources in.
Combat Attacking another robot at close range in order to destroy it. See Robots.
Core service One of the services the MSD itself operates: the Game, Map, Robot and Trading Service. They process the intents players send and publish every resulting state change as events.
Credits Trading The currency of the game, managed in a bank account.
Energy Robot The resource a robot consumes to act — moving and attacking cost energy. It regenerates over time.
Event An asynchronous message, published by the core services over Kafka, about a change in the state of the game. See Players.
Game Game A single bounded round that players join and play in.
Game state Game The stage a game is in.
Gravity Map A per-planet level that determines how much energy a robot spends to travel there.
Health points Robot A robot’s health. A robot whose health points drop to zero is destroyed.
Home station Robot The space station a player is assigned when joining a game, and where all of that player’s new robots spawn.
Intent An asynchronous command a player sends to a game object, such as moving or attacking with one of its robots, or mining on a planet. A robot executes an intent immediately upon receipt, or discards it if it cannot. See Robots.
Intent spoofing Sending intents in another player’s name. Nothing currently prevents it technically, so it is ruled out by a gentlemen’s agreement instead: it counts as cheating and is not allowed. See Players.
Map Map The two-dimensional grid of tiles a game is played on. Each tile is either a planet or a void and is addressed by an integer tuple, starting at (0,0) in the lower left corner.
Map tile Map A single cell of the map, identified by its integer tuple. A tile is either a planet or a void.
Mine Map A planet holding a finite amount of a single resource type. It produces until depleted, then closes and disappears from the map. A planet can have at most one mine.
Mining Map Extracting a resource from a mine, started by a player’s intent to the planet that names one of the player’s robots. On completion, only that robot can pick up the resource, and only if it is on the planet; otherwise the resource is lost.
Movement Robot Travelling to a connected neighbouring planet, horizontally, vertically or diagonally (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW). Movement costs energy determined by the target planet’s gravity.
Participant Game A player within one specific game.
Planet Map A traversable map tile, connected to its neighbouring planets. A planet is exactly one of: space station, resource mine, black hole, or empty. Any number of robots — allied and enemy alike — may occupy the same planet.
Player Game A participant of the Microservice Dungeon. See Players.
Player id Game The id a player is assigned. See Players.
Player service The microservice a human player provides and operates. It registers once as a player, joins games and controls robots by publishing intents over Kafka. See Players.
Regeneration Robot Health points and energy restore automatically over time, faster at a space station.
Resource Map A substance extracted from a mine, carried in a robot’s cargo hold and sold at a space station. Five types exist, from most common to rarest: Bio Matter (bm), Cryo Gas (cg), Dark Matter (dm), Ion Dust (id) and Plasma Cores (pc).
Robot Robot The unit a player controls, with health points and energy. It can move, collect mined resources, fight and be upgraded.
Score The points a player collects over a game, in several categories. The player with the most points wins. See Games.
Space station Map A planet serving as both trading outpost and safe zone — combat is not allowed there. Robots trade and buy upgrades at stations, and regenerate faster there.
Upgrade Trading A purchasable improvement to a robot, bought as a voucher tied to one specific robot. Four packages exist: Movement, Mining, Energy and Combat.
Void Map A map tile that is not a planet. Voids are not connected to any planet and therefore act as barriers that robots must navigate around.
Voucher Trading The token used to buy new robots and upgrades.
Last modified October 22, 2026: Update documentation (f481966)