Cloud Cooking Configuration

To onboard to Cloud Cooking, you need to start with the relevant Cloud Cooking Setup Guides tooling to work with the mod.io infrastructure and Cloud Cooking process. This differs per engine, and we recommend performing these steps and locally validating your engine before configuring Cloud Cooking on mod.io.

The following is a high level overview of the order of operations of the configuration process, explained in more detail throughout this document.

Enabling Cloud Cooking for your game

Once Cloud Cooking has been enabled for your game, you can begin the onboarding process. To begin the onboarding process, navigate to your Game Admin page and select Cloud Cooking from the top navigation bar. Select your game engine from the dropdown, and click Enable Cloud Cooking. This will begin the process of provisioning the infrastructure.

The Cloud Cooking onboarding page, where you select your game engine and enable the service.

note

Depending on your billing agreement with mod.io, you may begin to incur monthly costs as soon as this infrastructure is provisioned.

Provisioning the infrastructure takes a little bit of time. You can check back to this page later for the next step in the process, which is to upload your build. This is a one time step to provision the core infrastructure for your game.

Uploading your build

Once infrastructure has been provisioned, you will be presented with a prompt to upload your build to Azure Storage. This data is used to provision the virtual machine images to run the cook. What you need to provide to mod.io depends on what engine you are using - follow the appropriate game preparation guides for how to prepare your build for this step. The SAS Token provided in this step allows you to connect to the Azure Storage Container to provide your build.

The SAS token presented on your Cloud Cooking page, used to authenticate with the Azure Storage container.

Start by downloading and installing Azure Storage Explorer. Once you have installed Azure Storage Explorer, select Attach to Resource to connect to your container.

The Attach to Resource option in Azure Storage Explorer.

The resource you want to attach to is a Blob Container or Directory.

Selecting the Blob Container or Directory resource type in Azure Storage Explorer.

Select the option to connect using a SAS.

Choosing to connect to the resource using a SAS token.

Complete the setup by entering the SAS from your Cloud Cooking page.

Entering the SAS token copied from your Cloud Cooking page.

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The generated SAS token is valid for 7 days. Treat this SAS like a secret.

Once you have connected, you can upload your build to the available Cloud Cooking container as detailed in the Preparing Your Game section.

Uploading your build to the Cloud Cooking Azure Storage container via Azure Storage Explorer.

Finalizing your build

The Finalize Cloud Cooking modal, showing details and any issues found with your uploaded build.

Once you have uploaded your build, click Finalize and you will be presented with details on your uploaded build, including any issues that were found. If there are any issues, please make sure to resolve them before proceeding.

Select the appropriate VM size, click Yes, I want to proceed and mod.io will generate a virtual machine image for the Cloud Cooking build agents. This can take some time, particularly if your build is large. You can return to the configuration page to verify once the imaging and provisioning process is complete and Cloud Cooking is available for use.

Configuring Cloud Cooking platforms

Once the provisioning process has been completed, your game is now ready to accept source files from your creators. To configure which platforms can be produced by Cloud Cooking, navigate to your Game Admin page > General Settings > Platform Approvals.

Any platform which is Locked is available for creators to submit a file to for Cloud Cooking. Locked platforms cannot have content uploaded to them as part of the normal file upload flow.

As an example, the following configuration would allow content creators to upload their own files for Windows, but require PS4 and PS5 to go through the Cloud Cooking process.

An example Platform Approvals configuration: Windows accepts direct uploads, while PS4 and PS5 are locked to Cloud Cooking.

Source file upload

Once you have enabled Cloud Cooking and locked the target platforms, content creators will be able to add files targeting those platforms in their mod's File Management page through the standard File Upload flow.

The standard File Upload flow on a mod for their File Management page.

When uploading files, creators will now be given a With Cloud Cooking option. In this mode, all Locked platforms (the platforms intended to be targets for Cloud Cooking) are made available for selection. Any details filled in by the creator are copied to the output platform mod file as part of the Cloud Cooking process.

Selecting the With Cloud Cooking option and choosing target Locked platforms during file upload.

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Platform files that are produced by Cloud Cooking are subject to the same scanning, approval and moderation workflows as any other file that are uploaded to mod.io.

Cloud Cooking progress and status reporting

Once a file has been queued for Cloud Cooking, content creators can view the status of their files - whether they are pending cook, in the process of being cooked, and success or failure of the cook process. Once a cook has been completed, full logs are available for viewing in the Details pane for each cook job.

The Cloud Cooking status view, showing the progress and outcome of each queued cook job.

Cloud Cooking Logs

Within Cloud Cooking, there are two core locations which provide log output for debugging, these are; the logs/ folder for information on individual cook jobs, and the infralogs/ folder for information on the cloud cooking infrastructure. Both of these can be found within the clientbuild directory within the supplied storage account.

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The individual cook job logs are also provided to the mod creator via the Web UI, however direct access to the directory is not provided for creators.

The Cloud Cooking storage account, holding both the cook job logs as well as infrastructure logs.

Infrastructure Log Visibility

The infralogs/ folder within the storage container holds the build/diagnostic logs from mod.io's underlying VM image creation process. When mod.io builds or rebuilds the Windows VM image used to run cooks (e.g. after an engine/tooling update), the resulting log is copied here as buildlog.log (or buildlog-{version}.log for a specific image version). These can be useful for diagnosing why a new image failed to bake or why a cook environment behaves differently after an update.

The Cloud Cooking storage account which holds the infrastructure logs for cook deployments.

Creator Log Visibility

The logs/ folder within the storage container holds the individual cook job logs for Cloud Cooking. This is the complete output of the cook process separated by the target engine for the build and includes; engine output, platform tooling, timing, errors, and any creator facing log channels created by your studio. These are only accessible to your studio and mod creators never see these directly, however creators can view them via the Web UI.

The Cloud Cooking storage account which holds the individual mod logs for the build.