Build a cloud-based test environment - Amazon GameLift
Set up iterative testing with Amazon EC2Transition your game to Amazon GameLift managed fleets

Build a cloud-based test environment

Note

This topic covers iterative testing for games that are integrated with the Amazon GameLift server SDK version 5.x. If your game uses server SDK version 4.x or earlier, see Test your integration using Amazon GameLift Local.

Use an Amazon GameLift Anywhere fleet to iteratively build and test your game components in a cloud-based hosted environment. Create an Anywhere fleet with hosting resources and a connection to the Amazon GameLift service, run your game servers on them, and test game functionality as needed.

Deploy an Anywhere fleet with the Amazon GameLift Agent

If your game server build is integrated with Amazon GameLift SDK 5.x or later, you can deploy it to a cloud-based Anywhere fleet with the Amazon GameLift Agent. The Agent is a background process that manages game server life cycles and other tasks on each compute in a fleet. These tasks include registering the compute with an Anywhere fleet, acquiring an authentication token, and starting/stopping game server processes based on a set of instructions. The Agent is controlled by a fleet's runtime configuration, which you can update at any time during the life of the fleet. (The Agent is automatically deployed to managed EC2 fleets.) For more information and to download the Agent, see the Amazon GameLift GitHub repository.

Set up iterative testing with Amazon EC2

Use the guided workflow in this Amazon GameLift toolkit solution to set up a cloud-based hosting environment that mirrors the managed hosting experience with Amazon GameLift.

The GitHub repository provides a set of scripts that automate most of the processes for setting up a test environment with Amazon GameLift Anywhere and the Amazon GameLift Agent. It also provides guidance for updating the environment whenever you have a new game server build to test. You can run a single script that deploys a test environment with a sample game server build, or you can walk through each step to set it up with your own game server build.

In this workflow, you'll work entirely in the AWS Management Console, using AWS CloudShell to run scripts and complete command-line tasks.

Note

For the tasks in this tutorial, you need an AWS account user with permissions for the following services: Amazon GameLift, AWS CloudShell, Amazon S3, AWS Systems Manager, Amazon EC2, and AWS Identity and Access Management. Users with admin-level access to the AWS account already have the required permissions.

The workflow covers the following tasks:

  • Package a game server build for Amazon GameLift. The workflow provides a script to build a sample C++ game server, which has already been integrated with Amazon GameLift server SDK 5.x and is ready for hosting. Alternatively, you can work with your own game project if you've completed integration.

  • Set up an Amazon Simple Storage Service bucket to store game server builds and dependencies. As you produce new versions of your game builds, you can store them in S3 and use the scripts to update the Anywhere fleet for game testing.

  • Get and build the Amazon GameLift Agent. The Agent manages game server processes on a hosting resource based on your configuration. It uses the same logic and behaves identically to Amazon GameLift managed EC2 hosting.

  • Set up an Anywhere fleet for your hosting resources. With an Anywhere fleet you can use the Amazon GameLift service for hosting resources that aren't managed by Amazon GameLift. In this step, you'll also configure the runtime configuration, which instructs Amazon GameLift Agent when and how to start game server processes.

  • Set up an Amazon EC2 instance. This is your test environment for iterative testing. It is much faster to use a standard EC2 instance instead of a fully managed Amazon GameLift instance (which is optimized for production-level usage). With a standard EC2 instance, you can quickly and continually update the game server as needed.

  • Deploy your game server build and Amazon GameLift Agent to the Amazon EC2 instance. The workflow provides a script that gets the latest version of your game build and all dependencies and installs it on your EC2 instance. In this workflow, dependencies include the Amazon GameLift Agent and the CloudWatch Agent.

  • Start the Amazon GameLift Agent. Once installed, the Agent automatically starts and begins executing instructions. These include:

    • Register the EC2 instance as a compute in the Amazon GameLift Anywhere fleet.

    • Establish a WebSocket connection with the Amazon GameLift service and get the latest runtime configuration.

    • Start up game server processes based on the instructions in the runtime configuration. In this workflow, the Agent is instructed to start a single process of the game server executable.

  • Test your game scenarios. With the test environment set up and your latest game server build installed, you can commence testing. The workflow walks through several steps for testing including starting a game session. Access CloudWatch game server logs to track progress as the game session starts up and prepares to accept players.

    As you develop your game components, including a game client and client-side backend service, you can include these in your test scenarios. Use a game client to request a game session, retrieve connection info from the Amazon GameLift service, and then connect directly to the game session.

  • Deploy a new game server build and repeat tests. As you develop your game, you can generate new game server builds, then quickly deploy them to the EC2 test environment for testing. Upload them to the Amazon S3 bucket and then use the workflow scripts to update the test environment.

Transition your game to Amazon GameLift managed fleets

After you've completed development testing and you're ready to prepare for launch, this is a good time to switch over to Amazon GameLift managed fleets. Use managed fleets to fine-tune and test your game hosting resources. Implement your game session placement solution (queues and matchmakers), select optimum hosting hardware (including Spot fleets) and locations, and choose a strategy for scaling capacity. You might also want to start using AWS CloudFormation to more efficiently manage the life cycles of all your game hosting resources, including fleets, queues, and matchmakers.

It requires minimal effort to transition from a cloud-based Anywhere test fleet to an Amazon GameLift managed fleet. You don't need to change any game code, and you can reuse the same queues and matchmakers. Do the following tasks:

  • Create an Amazon GameLift build resource. With an Anywhere test fleet, you have to manually deploy your game server build and dependencies to each fleet compute. With a managed fleet, upload your game build package to Amazon GameLift, which automatically deploys it to all fleet computes. See Deploy a custom server build for Amazon GameLift hosting for details on packaging your game build files and creating a build resource with files in an Amazon S3 bucket.

  • Create a managed fleet. Create a fleet using the console or AWS CLI, specifying an EC2 managed fleet. This type of fleet requires additional configuration settings, including specifying the build resource and instance types. You can use the same runtime configuration to manage game server life cycle on each fleet compute. See Create an Amazon GameLift managed EC2 fleet for details on creating a managed fleet.

  • Redirect fleet aliases (optional). If you set up aliases to use with your Anywhere fleets, you can reuse the same aliases for your managed fleets. See Create an Amazon GameLift alias for details on creating or updating an alias.