Customizing AccelByte Gaming Services with Amazon GameLift Servers

AccelByte Gaming Services (AGS) provides developers with the most comprehensive and sophisticated set of backend solutions for managing game servers, matchmaking, sessions, and more. However, game teams are often looking to customize these services even further to meet the needs of the game design and support their players, AccelByte Extend opens the door to a new level of customization.

Extend for AccelByte Gaming Services

Extend is a service add-on that empowers game developers to build custom app logic on top of AGS features. Through Extend apps—developed in your preferred language like Go, Java, Python, or C#—you can write server-side code that integrates seamlessly with AGS infrastructure. AccelByte handles the hosting and observability, giving your team more room to focus on gameplay logic and integration.

Amazon GameLift Servers Support with Extend

If you prefer bring your own orchestration service as an alternative to AccelByte Multiplayer Servers, we’re excited to announce a new quickstart guide and Extend sample app available in our open Git repository for using Extend to integrate Amazon GameLift Servers with AGS.

Amazon GameLift Servers offers a highly flexible queue system that intelligently allocates game sessions to fleets based on factors like region, latency, and cost. Our sample Extend app demonstrates how to override core game session lifecycle methods in AGS to leverage this queue system.

Overriding the Game Session Lifecycle

AGS’s game session DSM (Dedicated Server Management) supports overriding three key lifecycle functions:

• CreateGameSession
• CreateGameSessionAsync
• TerminateGameSession

These methods can be managed within your Extend app using the AWS SDK for Go v2 to communicate with Amazon GameLift Servers.

Sync vs. Async Session Placement

• Synchronous Mode: Recommended for early development, this approach offers direct control over fleet selection and simplifies debugging.

• Asynchronous Mode: Ideal for production, this method taps into Amazon GameLift Servers’ queue system to automate fleet selection based on latency, cost, and geography. When a session is placed successfully, the dedicated server notifies AGS through UpdateDSInformation, updating its status to "AVAILABLE" and providing connection info.

Whether you're building a multiplayer game with global reach or fine-tuning fleet allocation, Extend with Amazon GameLift Servers gives you the flexibility to scale, test, and optimize your dedicated server logic your way!

Get started with AccelByte Gaming Services for Free today!