We are using external game server for our game. It uses C# PlayFab SDK - server calls RegisterGame after start and DeregisterGame before shutdown.
The interesting thing is the fact that if we are terminating game server instance from web Dashboard via clicking TERMINATE SERVER INSTANCES option, game becomes available in Archived Games tab, but, if server deregisters itself by calling DeregisterGame API call, it's just disappears from Active Games. Is this a bug or we are doing something in a wrong way.
Answer by Brendan · Nov 11, 2016 at 10:58 PM
The fact that the terminate option appears at all is a bug - we have no control over your external servers, and so should not be providing that option. I've filed a bug to get that fixed, but in the meantime, please don't use that option on external servers.
The game archive is for games hosted in PlayFab right now - that's where you would be able to retrieve the log file and any output files, as well as see the list of players who connected to that session. Obviously, we don't have the ability to automatically pull logs and output files from external servers, but we will be providing the player list for externally hosted sessions in an upcoming sprint.
Thank you for such a quick response! Actually, all we want to achieve is possibility to view list of games (played on external server) some player have played, just like a list provided in Multiplayer tab in player data.
We are using external server because architecture of our server is not suitable for creating big amount of actual instances (every game is just card turn-by-turn battle with 2 players), but we want to keep possibility to view statistics, maybe without log and output (but, it surely would be awesome to upload it via some API, yeah), just game id (LobbyId) and list of players. Is it that thing you're planning to do in next sprint?
It may not be in the next sprint, but yes, we will be adding the information on externally hosted sessions to the archived games tab (and the player game history). Sorry I can't provide a date for that yet, but until something is in active development, it's not really safe for us to give an estimate, as our schedule could change (being a live service means needing to adapt quickly to anything that comes up).