ludus

Ludus is a command-line interface tool designed to streamline the complex workflow of deploying Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) dedicated servers. It orchestrates a six-stage pipeline: prerequisite validation, engine source compilation, game server packaging via RunUAT BuildCookRun, Docker containerization, pushing images to Amazon ECR, and deploying fleets to AWS GameLift. Key capabilities include: - Multiple Build Backends: Supports native builds, Docker, Podman, and WSL2 (including a high-performance native ext4 mode for Windows users). - Cross-Platform Support: Works on Windows, Linux, and macOS (via container backends). - Architecture Support: Supports both x86_64 and ARM64 (AWS Graviton) targets. - DDC Integration: Implements Zen Store Derived Data Cache (DDC) to significantly accelerate cook times by persisting shader and asset caches across runs. - Flexible Deployment: Offers various deployment targets including GameLift fleets, CloudFormation stacks, managed EC2, and GameLift Anywhere for local development. - Observability: Includes build logging and optional OpenTelemetry (OTLP) export for build spans. The tool is particularly useful for teams needing to automate UE5 server builds in CI/CD environments, as it can utilize pre-built engine images to skip lengthy compilation stages.