Microservices - Overview
Create and deploy server-authoritative C# [CLCP-Microservices-01]
Beamable's Microservice FeatureFeature - An individual aspect of the Beamable product used to create a great user experience is custom-built to provide the best workflow and performance for game makers.
A microservice architecture, or "microservice", is a solution of developing software systems that focuses on building single-function modules with well-defined interfaces and operations. See Wikipedia for more info.
Microservcices DotNet requirements
Microservices now requires DotNet 5.0 to be installed locally on your machine for debugging. You can acquire this directly from Microsoft.
Beamables Microservices
Like never before, programming a server-authoritative feature feels like a natural extension of your favorite client-side tools and workflows — powered by Beamable Microservices.
Benefits
- Highly maintainable & testable
- Loosely coupled
- Independently deployable
The Microservice code is checked in alongside your client code to version control. With Beamable, there is less code since the system shares and serializes all client/server data structures.
Comparison
Beamable | Amazon AWS Lambda | GameSparks | Microsoft PlayFab | |
---|---|---|---|---|
C# Client Code | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
C# Server Code | ✔️ | |||
Full Debugging Support | ✔️ | |||
Source Control Integration | ✔️ | |||
Runs Locally During Development | ✔️ | |||
Unity Workflow | ✔️ |
There are trade-offs as well. Games using server technology like Microservices must be connected to the internet, each server-side operation call is slower than a client-side operation due to network latency, and there are fees incurred to host or use servers.
Server-Authoritative Benefits
Typically in game development, game code is on the game client. This is a client-authoritative approach. Moving functionality to the back-end is a server-authoritative approach. There are pros and cons.
Comparison: Client vs Server Benefits
Client-Authoritative | Server-Authoritative | |
---|---|---|
Speed Of Development | ✔️ | |
Speed At Runtime | ✔️ | |
Speed To Release Updates | ✔️ | |
High Security (Anti-Cheat) | ✔️ |
Compatible Beamable Features
Beamable provides an SDK that enables game makers to easily add social, commerce and content management FeatureFeature - An individual aspect of the Beamable product used to create a great user experiences.
The available features vary by context.
API Entry Points
- C# Client Code - Access via
Beamable.API
from a context outside of Microservices - C# Server Code (Microservice) - Access via
Services
from a context inside of a Microservice
Feature Comparison
Feature | C# Client Code | C# Server Code (Microservice) | |
---|---|---|---|
![]() ![]() | ✔️ | ||
![]() ![]() | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
![]() ![]() | |||
![]() ![]() | |||
![]() ![]() | ✔️ | ||
![]() ![]() | |||
![]() ![]() | N/A | ||
![]() ![]() | ✔️ | ||
![]() ![]() | ✔️ | ||
![]() ![]() | ✔️ | ||
![]() ![]() | ✔️ | ||
![]() ![]() | ✔️ | ||
![]() ![]() | ✔️ | ||
![]() ![]() | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
![]() ![]() | |||
![]() ![]() | |||
![]() ![]() | |||
![]() ![]() | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
![]() ![]() | |||
![]() ![]() | ✔️ |
Related Features
More details are covered in related feature page(s).
• Microservice Storage - Create and deploy a native Mongo database which we host
Advanced
This section contains any advanced configuration options and workflows.
Code Generation
The Microservice feature relies on automated code generation.
Each time the game maker edits and (re)saves any child class of Microservice
(e.g. "MyMicroservice") an equivalent class is (re)generated as a child class of MicroserviceClient
(e.g. "MyMicroserviceClient"). This workflow is provided for ease-of-use.
Gotchas
Here are hints to help explain some of the trickier concepts.
- The code generation requires that compiler errors exist. If a compiler error occurs (especially those related to Microservices) follow this process;
- Temporarily resolve and/or comment-out the code causing any compiler errors
- Allow the automated code generation to occur
- Resume development
Updated 4 months ago