Set up for iterative development with Amazon GameLift Anywhere
Amazon GameLift provides tools and solutions to help you set up a hosted test environment for use during game development. With these tools, you can create an environment that mirrors the real-world player experience of managed hosting with Amazon GameLift and supports a rapid, iterative development process.
With a separate test environment, you remove the overhead of an Amazon GameLift managed fleet during testing. You no longer have to upload each new game server build iteration, create a new fleet for it, and then wait 15+ minutes to it to activate. Instead, you can create a new build, quickly update the test fleet with the new build, start it, and commence testing.
Using an Amazon GameLift Anywhere fleet, you can set up a test environment using a local device, such as your development workstation. You can also set up a test environment using a cloud-based hosting resource.
Set up an Anywhere test environment to develop and test a range of scenarios, including these:
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Test your game server integration with the Amazon GameLift server SDK. You can test even without a working game client by using Amazon CLI calls to start new game sessions and track game session events.
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Test interactions between your game client, backend service, and the Amazon GameLift service as you develop components for your game. Fine-tune the player experience for joining a game.
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Experiment with your FlexMatch matchmaker design. Try out rule set variations and other matchmaking feature implementations. Set up and test matchmaking backfill.
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Try out other Amazon GameLift hosting features, such as runtime configuration settings (with the Amazon GameLift Agent) for game server life cycle management.
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Quickly build, test, and repeat to validate all aspects of your game's player experience, including multiplayer interactions, in a live, hosted environment.
Later, as you prepare your game for launch, you'll want to add Amazon GameLift managed fleets to fine-tune your hosting configurations and test additional scenarios, including the following:
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Experiment with and test game session queue designs, including use of multi-location fleets, Spot and On-Demand fleets, and multiple instance types.
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Try out game session placement options with managed fleets, including the use of optional latency policies and fleet prioritization settings.
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Configure capacity scaling to meet player demand, using automatic or manual scaling options.
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Set up Amazon CloudFormation with Amazon GameLift managed fleets to manage your hosting resources long term.