Game Server Platform

I’m building a place for friends and family to share game worlds—and for my kids to discover how much they can shape the technology they use.

Why I built it

Running our own servers gives us room to shape the rules, pace and difficulty around the people playing. I want it to be easy to spend time together in a controlled, enjoyable and balanced environment.

There is a learning goal behind it, too. I want my kids to understand how these systems work and how much they can create, customize and control themselves.

The experience I’m building

The goal is a console where trusted moderators can configure a game, preview a proposed change and redeploy with backups and a clear recovery path. Over time, I want that same experience to support different games, making it easier to start a new shared world.

How it works

The AWS architecture separates the persistent game server from its management interface. CloudFront serves the static console from private S3 storage; an authenticated API connects it to Python Lambda handlers. This keeps console delivery separate from the game process.

DynamoDB holds configuration drafts and operational records. Conditional writes check the expected draft version and observed baseline, so a stale edit cannot silently replace a newer record. Saving a draft does not deploy it.

The interface distinguishes configuration observed on the server, a proposed change and an operation that has actually run. That helps moderators understand what they are reviewing and what would affect the shared world. An observation of configuration files is not proof of what the running game has loaded.

Progress and next steps

The existing game server has supported play with friends. The hosted console supports authenticated inspection, configuration observation and recorded history. Its accepted draft workflow is currently limited to the supported gamma setting: save a draft, reopen it, and preview an unchanged value without creating a release.

Hosted Apply & Restart remains disabled. The next milestone is completing the supported configuration-change workflow through that path. Support for multiple game types and automated deployment, backup and recovery workflows remain development goals.