Tutorials and Resources

• AWS
  • GameLift
    • Unity Multiplayer with Realtime GameLift (architecture overview and setup, watched up to minute 7:00 so far, starting Lambda setup)

      • Notes

        Architecture Overview

        

        • Potential change we might want to make: use FlexMatch instead of manually searching for game server. FlexMatch is used by Second Dinner.
        • API Gateway is the “Gatekeeper” of all HTTP requests before passing them onto the appropriate lambda function
        • Lambda handles actual implementation of searching, joining, creating game sessions
          • In his previous videos, this functionality was done in Unity C# scripts, but to more closely emulate Second Dinner’s structure + for best practices, we’ll be doing it with Lambda, like he does in this new video
          • Also more secure this way! Maybe worth highlighting in presentation
        • What does the GameLift service itself actually contain?
          • Internal GameLift services and our Realtime Script
            • Realtime Server Script: custom code deployed to GameLift acting as backend server
            • Realtime Client: A script in unity that communicates with the Realtime Server Script
        • SQS (Simple Queue Service) and SNS (Simple Notification Service)
          • Used to handle any any all notifications (game session fulfillment, didn’t find a game session and need to create it, etc.)
          • SNS Generates the message, which gets sent to SQS (SQS is subscribed to SNS), and Unity client subscribes to SQS.
          • SNS, upon successful creation of a game session, also handles sending the message telling Unity that the session is ready + the info for connecting to that session

        Flow of Obtaining a Game Session and Paths Involved

        

        1. Request to Lambda to search for available game sessions (Gateway, Lambda)
        2. GameLift searches through “targeted queue’s destinations for a potential fleet that matches our request criteria”
           1. If session found, return connection and session information and immediately connect
           2. Else if no existing session found
              1. Kick off a “game session placement request” from Lambda., which returns an ID
              2. Pass ID back to client, use to subscribe on client side to “game session fulfillment” notifications
              3. Once the GameLift service finds a match (creates a new session or finds an available one that wasn’t before), push fulfillment message onto subscribed SQS queue (SNS —> SQS —> Client).
           3. Start the game!

        Actually setting up the architecture in AWS

        • I followed the steps starting at minute 7 in the video. No point in detailing every single step here, but it’s all in the video
        • High level summary
          1. Lambda setup
          2. API Gateway setup, link it to the lambda on POST request
          3. GameLift Setup
             1. Upload realtime server script
                1. Currently using monolithic single script, but can also zip and upload a node project, like we did with Lambda

        Lambda Script Code Overview

        • handler
          • Two main functions
            1. Searching for game sessions
            2. Creating game sessions
    • Basic setup series (might not need these actually, the other video seems pretty comprehensive)
      • Server Initialization with Fleets
      • Client to Server Connection
• Unity
  • My Favorite Tutorials

Ideas

• game where a bunch of people join one room
• Some kind of one-vs-many hide and seek?? Maybe the one has a vision cone where, when they see (quantumly observe/measure) someone, that person teleports somewhere random (would have to tune that randomness carefully to create good gameplay)
  • Update on this thought: the architecture we’re using is much better suited to having multiple sessions running. Usually, one would try to fit architecture to game, but since I want to use this architecture for interview prep, let’s try and design the game to be able to have multiple sessions going if possible.
• Explore
• Simple graphics, players can be dots
• Probably even want to go 2D graphics for ease, honestly. Don’t think we can support 3D on this timeline
• Two level system
  • “Ground” and “excited” states
  • You can “quantum tunnel” between the two layers by finding one time use consumables

Gameplay and Genre

• @Ben Kuchma and I talked about making a multiplayer game. I’m taking a course rn on multiplayer game dev and know AWS so I think we should try this
• Something action-based
  • Shooting?
  • Fighting?
• Interesting player movement
• Potentially something with a loose education theme

Themes and Aesthetic

• Probably go for something relatively colorful and eye catching, we want it to be judged favorably