Tutorial Build and Run a Simple Gameserver (Rust)

This tutorial describes how to use the Agones Rust SDK in a simple Rust gameserver.

Objectives

  • Run a simple gameserver
  • Understand how the simple gameserver uses the Agones Rust SDK
  • Build a customized version of the simple gameserver
  • Run your customized simple gameserver

Prerequisites

  1. Docker
  2. Agones installed on GKE
  3. kubectl properly configured
  4. A local copy of the Agones repository
  5. A repository for Docker images, such as Docker Hub or GC Container Registry

To install on GKE, follow the install instructions (if you haven’t already) at Setting up a Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster. Also complete the “Installing Agones” instructions on the same page.

While not required, you may wish to review the Create a Game Server, Create a Game Server Fleet, and/or Edit a Game Server quickstarts.

1. Run the simple gameserver

First, run the pre-built version of the simple gameserver and take note of the name that was created:

kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/googleforgames/agones/release-1.49.0/examples/rust-simple/gameserver.yaml
GAMESERVER_NAME=$(kubectl get gs -o go-template --template '{{range .items}}{{.metadata.name}}{{"\n"}}{{end}}')

The game server sets up the Agones SDK, calls sdk.ready() to inform Agones that it is ready to serve traffic, prints a message every 10 seconds, and then calls sdk.shutdown() after a minute to indicate that the gameserver is going to exit.

You can follow along with the lifecycle of the gameserver by running

kubectl logs ${GAMESERVER_NAME} rust-simple -f

which should produce output similar to

$$Rust Game Server has started! Creating SDK instance Setting a label Starting to watch GameServer updates... Health ping sent Setting an annotation Marking server as ready... ...marked Ready Getting GameServer details... GameServer name: rust-simple-txsc6 Running for 0 seconds GameServer Update, name: rust-simple-txsc6 GameServer Update, state: Scheduled GameServer Update, name: rust-simple-txsc6 GameServer Update, state: Scheduled GameServer Update, name: rust-simple-txsc6 GameServer Update, state: RequestReady GameServer Update, name: rust-simple-txsc6 GameServer Update, state: Ready Health ping sent Health ping sent Health ping sent Health ping sent Health ping sent Running for 10 seconds GameServer Update, name: rust-simple-txsc6 GameServer Update, state: Ready ... Shutting down after 60 seconds... ...marked for Shutdown Running for 60 seconds Health ping sent GameServer Update, name: rust-simple-txsc6 GameServer Update, state: Shutdown GameServer Update, name: rust-simple-txsc6 GameServer Update, state: Shutdown ...$$

If everything goes as expected, the gameserver will exit automatically after about a minute.

In some cases, the gameserver goes into an unhealthy state, in which case it will be restarted indefinitely. If this happens, you can manually remove it by running

kubectl delete gs ${GAMESERVER_NAME}

2. Build a simple gameserver

Change directories to your local agones/examples/rust-simple directory. To experiment with the SDK, open up main.rs in your favorite editor and change the interval at which the gameserver calls sdk.health() from 2 seconds to 20 seconds by modifying the line in the thread assigned to let _health to be

thread::sleep(Duration::from_secs(20));

Next build a new docker image by running

cd examples/rust-simple
REPOSITORY=<your-repository> # e.g. gcr.io/agones-images
make build-image REPOSITORY=${REPOSITORY}

The multi-stage Dockerfile will pull down all of the dependencies needed to build the image. Note that it is normal for this to take several minutes to complete.

Once the container has been built, push it to your repository

docker push ${REPOSITORY}/rust-simple-server:0.4

3. Run the customized gameserver

Now it is time to deploy your newly created gameserver container into your Agones cluster.

First, you need to edit examples/rust-simple/gameserver.yaml to point to your new image:

containers:
- name: rust-simple
  image: $(REPOSITORY)/rust-simple-server:0.4
  imagePullPolicy: Always

Then, deploy your gameserver

kubectl create -f gameserver.yaml
GAMESERVER_NAME=$(kubectl get gs -o go-template --template '{{range .items}}{{.metadata.name}}{{"\n"}}{{end}}')

Again, follow along with the lifecycle of the gameserver by running

kubectl logs ${GAMESERVER_NAME} rust-simple -f

which should produce output similar to

$$Rust Game Server has started! Creating SDK instance Setting a label Starting to watch GameServer updates... Health ping sent Setting an annotation Marking server as ready... ...marked Ready Getting GameServer details... GameServer name: rust-simple-z6lz8 Running for 0 seconds GameServer Update, name: rust-simple-z6lz8 GameServer Update, state: Scheduled GameServer Update, name: rust-simple-z6lz8 GameServer Update, state: RequestReady GameServer Update, name: rust-simple-z6lz8 GameServer Update, state: RequestReady GameServer Update, name: rust-simple-z6lz8 GameServer Update, state: Ready Running for 10 seconds GameServer Update, name: rust-simple-z6lz8 GameServer Update, state: Ready GameServer Update, name: rust-simple-z6lz8 GameServer Update, state: Unhealthy Health ping sent Running for 20 seconds Running for 30 seconds Health ping sent Running for 40 seconds GameServer Update, name: rust-simple-z6lz8 GameServer Update, state: Unhealthy Running for 50 seconds Health ping sent Shutting down after 60 seconds... ...marked for Shutdown Running for 60 seconds Running for 70 seconds GameServer Update, name: rust-simple-z6lz8 GameServer Update, state: Unhealthy Health ping sent Running for 80 seconds Running for 90 seconds Health ping sent Rust Game Server finished.$$

with the slower healthcheck interval, the gameserver gets automatically marked an Unhealthy by Agones.

To finish, clean up the gameserver by manually removing it

kubectl delete gs ${GAMESERVER_NAME}

Last modified June 13, 2025: Promote FeatureRollingUpdateFix to Beta (#4205) (30237be)