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Overview

This Guidance helps developers test, visualize, and optimize their multiplayer games using the Amazon GameLift Testing Toolkit. With the toolkit, developers can troubleshoot, debug, and tune their Amazon GameLift infrastructure. This Guidance offers an optional capability to use virtual players that run the same code as real players so developers can test the success of their game before launching it into production.

How it works

These technical details feature an architecture diagram to illustrate how to effectively use this solution. The architecture diagram shows the key components and their interactions, providing an overview of the architecture's structure and functionality step-by-step.

Well-Architected Pillars

The architecture diagram above is an example of a Solution created with Well-Architected best practices in mind. To be fully Well-Architected, you should follow as many Well-Architected best practices as possible.

Both the toolkit and the sample game are fully deployed with infrastructure as code, which reduces errors caused by manual processes and reduces the effort to deploy changes.

Read the Operational Excellence whitepaper 

The serverless web console API on API Gateway is protected with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) based authentication against a  Cognito User Pool.  

The serverless sample game backend on API Gateway is protected with IAM-based authentication for secure validation of the player's guest identity.

Game servers on GameLift only allow access to the ports used for client-server communication. The backend Lambda functions only have access to the services they need.

Read the Security whitepaper 

Data is stored in DynamoDB tables, utilizing on-demand capacity allocation to automatically scale based on changes in demand.  

The solution backend services use Lambda,  which scales instances automatically.  

The sample game backend supports GameLift Target-based auto-scaling to handle changes in demand.

Read the Reliability whitepaper 

By utilizing managed, serverless technologies such as API Gateway , Lambda , DynamoDB , and Fargate , you only pay for the resources you use and reduce the operational effort required to maintain the solution.  

The solution can be deployed into a region of your choice, and utilizes CloudFront to reduce latency for the web console end user.

Read the Performance Efficiency whitepaper 

Virtual Player Tasks can be launched with Fargate Spot to reduce the cost of testing.

The web console and sample game backends utilize serverless technologies so that you only pay for the resources you use.  

The web console backend utilizes the native scaling features of Lambda and API Gateway , with DynamoDB tables using on-demand capacity allocation to ensure the resources match the demand.

The sample game backend supports GameLift Target-based auto-scaling to minimize the resources required.

Read the Cost Optimization whitepaper 

This Guidance extensively uses managed services, which shifts responsibility for maintaining high-average utilization to AWS.

The sample game backend supports GameLift Target-based auto-scaling to minimize the resources required. By packing game sessions onto the minimum number of server instances, resource utilization is kept consistently high.

By widely utilizing managed services, this Guidance reduces your individual impact on the environment.  

You can further reduce the sustainability impact of unused resources by launching game servers onto Spot fleets, and launching Virtual Player tasks onto Fargate Spot.

Read the Sustainability whitepaper 

Deploy with confidence

Ready to deploy? Review the sample code on GitHub for detailed deployment instructions to deploy as-is or customize to fit your needs. 

Go to sample code

Disclaimer

The sample code; software libraries; command line tools; proofs of concept; templates; or other related technology (including any of the foregoing that are provided by our personnel) is provided to you as AWS Content under the AWS Customer Agreement, or the relevant written agreement between you and AWS (whichever applies). You should not use this AWS Content in your production accounts, or on production or other critical data. You are responsible for testing, securing, and optimizing the AWS Content, such as sample code, as appropriate for production grade use based on your specific quality control practices and standards. Deploying AWS Content may incur AWS charges for creating or using AWS chargeable resources, such as running Amazon EC2 instances or using Amazon S3 storage.