Getting started with Amazon GameLift - Amazon GameLift
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Getting started with Amazon GameLift

We recommend that you try the following examples before you use Amazon GameLift for your own game. The custom game server example gives you experience with game hosting in the Amazon GameLift console. The Realtime Servers example shows you how to prepare a game for hosting using Realtime Servers.

To get started with Amazon GameLift for your own game, see Amazon GameLift managed hosting roadmap.

Custom game server example

This example demonstrates a live custom game on Amazon GameLift. The example walks you through the following steps:

  • Creating an example game build.

  • Creating a fleet to run the game server.

  • Connecting to the game server from the example game client.

  • Reviewing fleet and game session metrics.

After these steps, you can start up multiple game clients and play the game to generate hosting data. Then, you can explore the Amazon GameLift console to view your hosting resources, track metrics, and experiment with ways to scale hosting capacity.

To get started, sign in to the Amazon GameLift console.

Realtime Servers example game

This example is a complete multiplayer game named Mega Frog Race, with source code included. The example shows how to integrate your game client with Realtime Servers. You can also use this example game as a starting point to experiment with other Amazon GameLift features such as FlexMatch.

For a hands-on tutorial, see Creating Servers for Multiplayer Mobile Games with Just a Few Lines of JavaScript on the Amazon for Games Blog.

For the source code of Mega Frog Race, see the GitHub repository.

The source code includes the following parts:

  • Game client – A source code for the C++ game client, created in Unity. The game client gets game session connection information, connects to the server, and exchanges updates with other players.

  • Backend service – A source code for an Amazon Lambda function that manages direct API calls to Amazon GameLift.

  • Realtime script – A source script file that configures a fleet of Realtime Servers for the game. This script includes the minimum configuration required for Realtime Servers to communicate with Amazon GameLift and to host games.