GameLift Anywhere with Flexmatch in Unreal

Question

Hello,

I am using unreal engine, i've setup everything to support GameLift and tested on managed EC2 instances and everything is working fine.
Also I've setup Anywhere, followed all the steps from the documentation, and I am able to launch a server that registers and calls InitSDK() successfully.

The problem is that I'm trying to matchmake using flexmatch, but the ticket is stuck on "PLACING", and that's because the "OnStartGameSession" is not being called in unreal once a match is found.

Does Anywhere not support Flexmatch?

Accepted Answer

Hi Elie,

I have managed to solve this problem, so I'm sharing the information with you.

In the Gamelift console's navigation page, select Queues where there is a screen for creating queues. It's also fine to use the queue editing screen. In the section for the placement of game sessions, have you specified a aws region where it should be set to all locations?

Instead, set this to all locations or specify the custom location you created for Anywhere. This should transfer the game session queue to the custom location after matching from Flexmatch.

Answer

Hello, 
I am also facing a similar issue.

I'm using the SDK version 5.1.1 for a C++ build in UnrealEngine and waiting for OnStartGameSession. However, specifically when I set the target Fleet in the Flexmatch settings to 'Anywhere', the GameSession does not start, and nothing happens.

The behavior of the 'Anywhere' Fleet seems like it does not support the FlexMatch queue system. I'm not sure if this is a bug or part of the design.

For a GameliftFleet to become 'Active', it requires an excessively long time, more than 30 minutes on Windows and over 20 minutes on Linux. This makes it feel unrealistic in development. Having 'Gamelift Anywhere' function fully is most crucial for developers.

Answer

Hey Elie,

FlexMatch should support Anywhere just fine as they're independent products. `PLACING` status means that the matching process has completed and GameLift is attempting to place your match using the provided GameSessionQueue (similar to calling StartGameSessionPlacement directly). This most likely means either your Anywhere fleet is not be prioritized for placement, or your Anywhere fleet doesn't have an active server process to place a game session on. Here are some things to look into that might help:
* Try calling CreateGameSession yourself for your Anywhere fleet.
  * If you get a failure about being out of capacity, most likely your game server isn't completing the activation (For example, you mentioned calling InitSDK, but you also need to call ProcessReady for GameLift to register the process as active).
  * Here's some useful documentation on how the game server interactions play out: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/gamelift/latest/developerguide/gamelift-sdk-interactions.html
* If CreateGameSession works fine, then it's possible your queue is not prioritizing your Anywhere fleet for placements.
  * Have you confirmed your resource references are as expected: the Anywhere fleet you registered the process with is indeed a destination in your GameSessionQueue referenced by the Matchmaking Configuration you called StartMatchmaking on?
  * If you are providing player latency information to the match, are you missing latency information for the Anywhere fleet's custom locations?
  * Similarly, are these latencies breaching your queue's latency threshold: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/gamelift/latest/apireference/API_CreateGameSessionQueue.html#gamelift-CreateGameSessionQueue-request-PlayerLatencyPolicies?

If you need more help, you can create a [support ticket](https://support.console.aws.amazon.com/support/home) which will allow the team to dive deeper into the specific issue you are encountering.

Regards,

Jackson

GameLift Anywhere with Flexmatch in Unreal

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