Dependencies

• High-level understanding of Metaplay Cloud - We recommend reading the Introduction to Cloud Deployments to understand the key concepts of cloud deployments.
• A Metaplay Pro project - To provision cloud environments, you need to sign up to a Metaplay Pro project plan in the developer portal.
• Metaplay CLI - Install the Metaplay CLI if you haven't already.
• Docker - You need to have Docker installed on your machine.

Overview

Doing cloud deployments is an easy process, with the Metaplay CLI taking care of the heavy lifting. To do a deployment, you need to:

1. Build a container image of your game server.
2. Deploy the container image to the target cloud environment.

...and, of course, test the newly deployed server.

For the sake of simplicity, we will be doing our first deployment manually to experience the process. After that, we will be setting up an automated pipeline to make deployments for us.

Build & Deploy Manually

1. Build a Container Image

A container image is a self-contained package of your game server, and all its dependencies. You can build a container image using the metaplay build image command.

At this point, you should have Docker installed and running on your machine for the build to work.

MyGame$ metaplay build image

The build command will generate a container image named <projectID>:<timestamp>, like lovely-wombats-build:1755849940, for example.

2. Deploy the Game Server

With a container image built, you can deploy it to your cloud environment with the metaplay deploy server command. Notice how we don't need to specify the container image or the environment, as the CLI will ask you for any missing details.

MyGame$ metaplay deploy server

For repeated runs, you could also specify the environment and container image explicitly:

MyGame$ metaplay deploy server lovely-wombats-build-nimbly lovely-wombats-build:1755849940

3. Test the Deployment

The Metaplay CLI will do a few automatic checks to make sure the deployment is working. For a manual test, you should be able to see the game server running in the environment details page in the Developer Portal.

From there, you can access the game server's LiveOps Dashboard and the observability tools.

If you prefer quick access from the CLI, you can use the metaplay debug logs command to quickly check the latest logs of the game server.

MyGame$ metaplay debug logs [ENVIRONMENT]

Connect From the Unity Editor

If this was your first time setting up a cloud environment, you need to configure your Unity project to know about the environment. You can do this by following the Setup section of the Environment Configs guide.

Next, select the deployed environment as the active environment in Unity's Metaplay → Environment Configs menu.

Then, press play in Unity and your client will connect to the deployed game server.

Further Reading

We have now successfully deployed a game server to the Metaplay Cloud and tested it from the Unity Editor. Next, you can set up an automated pipeline to make deployments for you.

• Setup CI Pipeline - Learn how to set up CI pipelines that automatically deploy new versions of the game server directly from your source control.
• Troubleshooting - Learn how to troubleshoot common issues with cloud deployments.