Integrating games with the Amazon GameLift plugin for Unreal Engine - Amazon GameLift
About the pluginPlugin workflow

Integrating games with the Amazon GameLift plugin for Unreal Engine

The topics in this section describe the Amazon GameLift plugin for Unreal Engine (UE) and how to use it to prepare your multiplayer game project for hosting with Amazon GameLift. Work entirely in your UE development environment with the plugin's guided workflows to complete the basic requirements for hosting with Amazon GameLift.

Amazon GameLift is a fully managed service that lets game developers manage and scale dedicated game servers for session-based multiplayer games. For more information about Amazon GameLift hosting, see How Amazon GameLift works.

Topics

About the plugin

The plugin adds Amazon GameLift tools and functionality to the UE editor. The plugin's guided workflows to integrate Amazon GameLift into your game project, designate a workstation as a local host for testing, and deploy the game server to Amazon GameLift cloud hosting.

Use the plugin's pre-built hosting solutions to deploy your game. Set up an Amazon GameLift Anywhere fleet with your local workstation as a host. For cloud hosting, choose from two common deployment scenarios that balance player latency, game session availability, and cost in different ways. One scenario includes a simple FlexMatch matchmaker and rule set. Use these solutions to get started quickly with a production-ready hosting structure in place, and then optimize and customize as needed.

The plugin includes these components:

  • Plugin modules for the UE editor. When the plugin is installed, a new main menu button gives you access to Amazon GameLift functionality.

  • C++ libraries for the Amazon GameLift service API with client-side functionality.

  • Unreal libraries for the Amazon GameLift server SDK (version 5).

  • Content for testing, including a startup game map and two testing maps with basic blueprints and UI elements for use with testing a server integration.

  • Editable configurations, in the form of AWS CloudFormation templates, that the plugin uses when deploying your game server for hosting.

Plugin workflow

The following steps describe a typical approach to integrating and deploying a game project with the Amazon GameLift plugin for Unreal Engine. You complete these steps by working in the UE editor and your game code.

  1. Create a user profile that links to your AWS account and provides access credentials for valid account user with permissions to use Amazon GameLift.

  2. Add server code to your game project to establish communication between a running game server and the with Amazon GameLift service.

  3. Add client code to your game project that lets game clients send requests to Amazon GameLift to start new game sessions and then connect to them.

  4. Use the Anywhere workflow to set up your local workstation as an Anywhere host for your game server. Launch your game server and client locally through the plugin, connect to a game session, and test your integration.

  5. Use the EC2 hosting workflow to upload your integrated game server and deploy a cloud hosting solution, When your game server is ready, launch your game client locally through the plugin, connect to a game session and play the game.

When working in the plugin, you'll create and use AWS resources, These actions might incur charges to the AWS account in use. If you're new to AWS, these actions might be covered under the AWS Free Tier.