Deploy a server for an open source game

Deploy a server for an open source game

In this quickstart, you learn how to work with game server realms, clusters, deployments, configs, and rollouts in Game Servers using the Google Cloud CLI.

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For step-by-step guidance for this task directly in the Google Cloud console, click Guide me:

Guide me

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The following sections take you through the same steps as clicking Guide me.

Before you begin

1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

2. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

   Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

   Go to project selector

3. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Cloud project. Learn how to check if billing is enabled on a project.

4. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

   Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

   Go to project selector

5. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Cloud project. Learn how to check if billing is enabled on a project.

6. Ensure that you have enabled the Game Services API.
Enable Game Services API

Choosing a shell

To complete this quickstart, you can use either Cloud Shell or your local shell.

Cloud Shell is a shell environment for managing resources hosted on Google Cloud. Cloud Shell comes preinstalled with the gcloud command-line tool. The gcloud CLI provides the primary command-line interface for Game Servers.

Cloud Shell

To launch Cloud Shell, perform the following steps:

1. Go to Google Cloud console.

   Google Cloud console

2. From the upper-right corner of the console, click the Activate Cloud Shell button:

A Cloud Shell session opens inside a frame lower on the console. You use this shell to run gcloud commands.

Local shell

Install the gcloud CLI.

Verify that you have set desired default project for Google Cloud CLI (otherwise you need to specify flag --project explicitly for each command later):

gcloud config list project

If not you can run the following command to set a default project, replacing PROJECT_ID with your desired project ID :

gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID

Run the following command to verify your version of the Google Cloud CLI. Game Servers requires version 306.0.0 or higher of the gcloud CLI.

gcloud version

To update your installation, run the following command:

gcloud components update

If you select local shell, then you might need to install the Kubernetes command-line tool kubectl:

gcloud components install kubectl

Creating a Google Kubernetes Engine cluster

To create a Google Kubernetes Engine cluster:

1. In the Cloud console, enable the Kubernetes Engine API.

   Enable the API

2. Run the following command to create a cost-optimized cluster with one node in the us-central1-a zone:

   gcloud container clusters create gcgs-quickstart \
   --cluster-version=1.22 \
   --tags=game-server \
   --scopes=gke-default \
   --num-nodes=1 \
   --no-enable-autoupgrade \
   --machine-type=e2-standard-2 \
   --zone=us-central1-a
   

   Note: You must pick a zone within one of the supported locations.

3. Run the following command to retrieve the credentials for the GKE cluster you created in the previous step:

   gcloud container clusters get-credentials gcgs-quickstart --zone=us-central1-a
   

   kubectl uses these credentials to run commands on your Kubernetes clusters. See Configuring cluster access for kubectl for more information.

Installing Agones on GKE

In this section, you install the open-source Agones gaming infrastructure platform. To install Agones:

Note: For more information about Agones, including an overview, getting started instructions, how-to guides, and tutorials, see the Agones Documentation.

1. Run the following command to create the agones-system namespace:

   kubectl create namespace agones-system
   

2. Run the following command to install Agones:

   kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/googleforgames/agones/release-1.24.0/install/yaml/install.yaml
   

3. You can validate that Agones system is running by checking the status of the Kubernetes pods:

   kubectl get --namespace agones-system pods
   

   All the pods are expected to be in a Running state:

   NAME                                 READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   agones-allocator-6694dcc89-7r75d     1/1     Running   0          28s
   agones-allocator-6694dcc89-m7ghq     1/1     Running   0          28s
   agones-allocator-6694dcc89-qp6cm     1/1     Running   0          28s
   agones-controller-56c98db844-llzzc   1/1     Running   0          22s
   agones-ping-d9d74c5c6-8kmt6          1/1     Running   0          24s
   agones-ping-d9d74c5c6-xwn4h          1/1     Running   0          24s
   

Creating Game Servers resources

To create Game Servers resources:

1. Create a realm in the same location as the GKE cluster:

   gcloud game servers realms create realm-quickstart --time-zone EST --location us-central1
   

2. Register your Agones GKE cluster with Game Servers and attach it to the realm you created in the previous step:

   gcloud game servers clusters create cluster-quickstart \
   --realm=realm-quickstart \
   --gke-cluster locations/us-central1-a/clusters/gcgs-quickstart \
   --namespace=default \
   --location us-central1 \
   --no-dry-run
   

3. Create a game server deployment, which you use to store all your game server configurations, and then roll them out to your game server clusters:

   gcloud game servers deployments create deployment-quickstart
   

   Now that you have a game server deployment, you can add a game server config to it using the gcloud CLI.

4. Copy the following example Agones fleet spec manifest to a new file named fleet_configs.yaml in the current directory:

   - name: fleet-spec-1
     fleetSpec:
       replicas: 2
       template:
         metadata:
           labels:
             foo: bar
         spec:
           ports:
           - name: default
             portPolicy: Dynamic
             containerPort: 7654
           template:
             spec:
               containers:
               - name: simple-game-server
                 image: gcr.io/agones-images/simple-game-server:0.3
   

5. To create the game server config, run the following command:

   gcloud game servers configs create config-1 --deployment deployment-quickstart --fleet-configs-file fleet_configs.yaml
   

6. To update the rollout, run the following command:

   gcloud game servers deployments update-rollout deployment-quickstart --default-config config-1 --no-dry-run
   

7. To validate the rollout of one fleet under default namespace, run the following command:

   kubectl get fleet
   

   The following illustrates the expected output:

   NAME                                     SCHEDULING   DESIRED   CURRENT   ALLOCATED   READY   AGE
   fleet-deployment-quickstart-config-1   Packed       2         2         0           2       4s
   

   The output confirms that you have deployed a fleet with two simple UDP server replicas in your cluster that are ready to accept connections.

Testing connectivity to the game server

To test connectivity to the game server:

1. Create a firewall rule to open the UDP ports required to connect to the cluster:

   Note: The --target-tags parameter matches the tags you specified when you created the GKE cluster.

   gcloud compute firewall-rules create gcgs-quickstart-firewall \
   --allow udp:7000-8000 \
   --target-tags game-server \
   --description "Firewall to allow game server udp traffic"
   

2. Next, get the IP address and port number for an individual game server:

   kubectl get gameserver
   

   The command returns output similar to the following:

   NAME                                                 STATE   ADDRESS          PORT   NODE                                             AGE
   fleet-deployment-quickstart-config-1-nndvr-5gvch   Ready   IP_ADDRESS   PORT_NUMBER   gke-gcgs-quickstart-default-pool-db3d2ee8-dlg7   11s
   fleet-deployment-quickstart-config-1-nndvr-vqwpl   Ready   IP_ADDRESS   PORT_NUMBER   gke-gcgs-quickstart-default-pool-db3d2ee8-dlg7   11s
   

3. To test connectivity, you run the Netcat command. To install Netcat on Linux, run the following command:

   sudo apt install netcat
   

   Note: To install Netcat on Windows, see Windows Subsystem for Linux Installation Guide for Windows 10.

4. To start the test, run the following command:

   nc -u IP_ADDRESS PORT_NUMBER
   

5. Next, type Hello and the command returns output similar to the following:

   Hello
   > ACK: Hello
   

6. Use Ctrl+C to stop the test.

(Optional) Deploy a server for an open-source game title

You can update the rollout to deploy a fleet with two open-source game server replicas in your cluster. These game servers support the multiplayer version of the racing game SuperTuxKart.

1. Overwrite the existing fleet_configs.yaml file with the following Agones fleet spec:

   - name: supertuxkart
     fleetSpec:
       replicas: 2
       template:
         metadata:
           labels:
             version: "1.0"
         spec:
           ports:
           - name: default
             containerPort: 8080
           health:
             initialDelaySeconds: 30
             periodSeconds: 60
           template:
             spec:
               containers:
               - name: supertuxkart
                 image: gcr.io/agones-images/supertuxkart-example:0.3
   

2. You cannot update an existing game server config because they are immutable. Create a new config that references the updated fleet spec manifest:

   gcloud game servers configs create stk-1 --deployment deployment-quickstart --fleet-configs-file fleet_configs.yaml
   

3. Update the rollout with the new config:

   gcloud game servers deployments update-rollout deployment-quickstart --default-config stk-1 --no-dry-run
   

4. Get the IP address and port number for an individual game server:

   kubectl get gameserver
   

   Note: For a production game, you would need to allocate a server before connecting clients to it. Allocation ensures the server is not removed while a game is in progress.

5. Download a SuperTuxKart client.

6. Start the SuperTuxKart client.

7. Click the Online button on the main menu, and then click the Enter server address button.

   

8. Enter the IP address and port number for an individual game server (from a previous step).

9. Click Start race to start the game.

You can download the SuperTuxKart client on other platforms to connect to the same server and participate in the race.

Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account for the resources used on this page, follow these steps.

If you don't want to keep any of the resources you created in this quickstart, you can delete the project:

Caution: Deleting a project has the following effects:

• Everything in the project is deleted. If you used an existing project for this tutorial, when you delete it, you also delete any other work you've done in the project.
• Custom project IDs are lost. When you created this project, you might have created a custom project ID that you want to use in the future. To preserve the URLs that use the project ID, such as an appspot.com URL, delete selected resources inside the project instead of deleting the whole project.

If you plan to explore multiple tutorials and quickstarts, reusing projects can help you avoid exceeding project quota limits.

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Manage resources page.

   Go to Manage resources

2. In the project list, select the project that you want to delete, and then click Delete.
3. In the dialog, type the project ID, and then click Shut down to delete the project.

Alternatively, if you want to keep the project, complete the following steps to manually delete the resources you created in this quickstart:

1. To delete the firewall rule, run the following command:

   gcloud compute firewall-rules delete gcgs-quickstart-firewall
   

2. To clear the default rollout, run the following command:

   gcloud game servers deployments update-rollout deployment-quickstart --clear-default-config --no-dry-run
   

3. To delete the game server config, run the following command:

   gcloud game servers configs delete config-1 --deployment deployment-quickstart
   

   If you completed the optional section, delete the additional game server config:

   gcloud game servers configs delete stk-1 --deployment deployment-quickstart
   

4. To delete the game server deployment, run the following command:

   gcloud game servers deployments delete deployment-quickstart
   

5. To delete the game server cluster, run the following command:

   gcloud game servers clusters delete cluster-quickstart --realm=realm-quickstart --location=us-central1 --no-dry-run
   

6. To delete the realm, run the following command:

   gcloud game servers realms delete realm-quickstart --location=us-central1
   

7. To disable the Game Services API, run the following command:

   gcloud services disable gameservices.googleapis.com
   

8. To delete the GKE cluster, run the following command:

   gcloud container clusters delete gcgs-quickstart --zone=us-central1-a
   

What's next

For a technical introduction to Game Servers concepts, see the Overview of Game Servers.

Learn about specific Game Servers tasks in the How-to guides.

Review the Terraform deployment sample project.