Dependencies

• Download the metaplay-gameserver Helm chart - This Helm chart helps make swift Deployments into Metaplay Cloud. The chart can be found at https://charts.metaplay.dev/
• Working knowledge of Helm - To make the most out of this page, you should have a basic understanding of how to use Helm values and files. Check out Helm's documentation for information on values and files.

Overview

Helm charts are packages that generate Kubernetes manifests and deploy applications into Kubernetes clusters. They do this using Helm deployment files, wich are YAML files that consist of sets of Helm values and shall be consumed by a Helm chart. The Helm values themselves are YAML entries that compose a collection of settings. Metaplay provides metaplay-gameserver, a Helm chart for making smooth deployments into Metaplay Cloud. The chart can be found at https://charts.metaplay.dev/

The metaplay-gameserver Helm chart comes with default Helm values that are configured for a vanilla deployment. However, you may want to further tailor the Helm values to fit the actual needs of your game server.

Customize Helm Values

You can opt in to using custom Helm values files by modifying metaplay-project.yaml. You can specify a values file for the server and the botclient for each environment separately. For example:

environments:
  - name: Develop
    ...
    # Specify custom Helm values file for the game server to use:
    serverValuesFile: Backend/Deployments/develop-server.yaml
    # Specify custom Helm values file for the botclient to use:
    botclientValuesFile: Backend/Deployments/develop-botclient.yaml

You can place these Helm values files anywhere you want, but the recommended convention is to store them in Backend/Deployments/ with file names <environment>-server.yaml and <environment>-botclients.yaml for the game server and bot client, respectively.

These values files are automatically passed to Helm when deploying with the Metaplay CLI.

Common Use Cases

Customize Runtime Options Files

By default, the game server will use the following runtime options files (located in your project's Backend/Server/Config/ directory):

• Options.base.yaml is used in all deployments.
• Options.<envFamily>.yaml is determined by the environment family used:
  • Options.local.yaml when environment family is Local (game server running locally).
  • Options.dev.yaml when environment family is Development (all development environments).
  • Options.stage.yaml when environment family is Staging.
  • Options.prod.yaml when environment family is Production.

You can customize this in your values.yaml as follows:

config:
  files:
    - "./Config/Options.base.yaml"
    - "./Config/Options.dev.yaml"
    - "./Config/Options.my-custom.yaml"

Note that you need to specify the full list of runtime options files.

Enable Experimental Features

Metaplay constantly publishes experimental features that are disabled by default until fully tested. To enable certain experimental features for a deployment, you need to explicitly add YAML entries into Backend/Deployments/<env>.yaml under the experimental key:

# Enable experimental features
experimental:
  <feature name>:
    enabled: true
    # ... other feature-specific settings
  # ... more features

All Configuration Options

By default, each Helm chart comes with a values.yaml file under its root directory, providing pre-defined settings that you can be overridden.

The metaplay-gameserver Helm chart abides by the same standard. You can inspect all default settings of the metaplay-gameserver Helm chart by downloading the chart from https://charts.metaplay.dev/. Search for the keyword metaplay-gameserver and you will find all available versions of the metaplay-gameserver Helm chart. To download a specific Helm chart, append metaplay-gameserver-<chart version>.tgz to the URL. The values.yaml file will be available under the root directory after extraction.

To customize a deployment, you need to modify the Backend/Deployments/<env>.yaml file accordingly. The YAML file will be read by the metaplay-gameserver Helm chart when installing or upgrading a deployment and overriding any default settings that come with the metaplay-gameserver Helm chart.