Turn on automatic backfill
With automatic match backfill, Amazon GameLift Servers automatically triggers a backfill request whenever a game session starts with one or more unfilled player slots. This feature allows games to start as soon as the minimum number of matched players is found and fill remaining slots later as additional players are matched. You can opt to stop automatic backfill at any time.
As an example, consider a game that can hold six to ten players. FlexMatch initially locates six players, forms the match, and starts a new game session. With automatic backfill, the new game session can immediately request an additional four players. Depending on the game style, we might want to allow new players to join at any time during the game session. Alternatively, we might want to stop automatic backfill after initial setup phase and before gameplay starts.
To add automatic backfill to your game, make the following updates to your game.
-
Enable automatic backfill. Automatic backfill is managed in a matchmaking configuration. When enabled, it is used with all matched game sessions that are created with that matchmaker. Amazon GameLift Servers begins generating backfill requests for a non-full game session as soon as the game session starts up on a game server.
To turn on automatic backfill, open a match configuration and set the backfill mode to "AUTOMATIC". For more details, see Create a matchmaking configuration
-
Turn on backfill prioritization. Customize your matchmaking process to prioritize filling backfill requests before creating new matches. In your matchmaking rule set, add an algorithm component and set backfill priority to "high". For more details, see Customize the match algorithm.
-
Update game session with new matchmaker data. Amazon GameLift Servers updates your game server with match information using the Server SDK callback function
onUpdateGameSession(see Initialize the server process). Add code to your game server to handle updated game session objects as a result of backfill activity. Learn more in Update match data on the game server. -
Turn off automatic backfill for a game session. You can opt to stop automatic backfill at any point during an individual game session. To stop automatic backfill, add code to your game client or game server to make the Amazon GameLift Servers API call StopMatchmaking. This call requires a ticket ID. Use the backfill ticket ID from the latest backfill request. You can get this information from the game session matchmaking data, which is updated as described in the previous step.