Minesweeper GUI: Inter-Process Communication in Godot

Minesweeper GUI is a simple yet illustrative project demonstrating how to build a game using the Godot 4 engine while delegating all game logic and computations to an external C++ console application.

This project serves as a clean example of separating the user interface from the core game logic. The Godot-based game handles only rendering, user interactions, and sending/receiving commands. All calculations—such as mine placement, tile revealing, win/loss conditions, etc.—are performed by a lightweight C++ backend, engine.exe.

Architecture

• Frontend: Developed in Godot 4 using GDScript. Handles:

  • GUI rendering

  • Input handling

  • Communication with the game engine (via standard input/output)

• Backend: A separate C++ console application (engine.exe) that runs in the background as a separate process. It:

  • Performs all game logic

  • Responds to commands from the GUI

  • Terminates when the game is closed

Why This Approach?

Performance: Heavy computations are offloaded to a fast, compiled C++ engine.

Modularity: You can easily replace engine.exe with another backend (e.g., a Rust or Python engine) as long as it follows the same command protocol—without changing the Godot project.

Educational Value: Great example of how to integrate Godot with external processes and structure larger, decoupled systems.

Engine

The engine.exe console application communicates with the Godot frontend through inter-process communication (IPC) using pipes. It processes a set of simple text-based commands, enabling the GUI to control the game logic without handling any calculations directly.

Supported commands:

• startGame – Initializes a new game with a freshly generated minefield.

• getVisual – Returns the current visible state of the game board (as seen by the player).

• inputPlot – Attempts to reveal a specific cell (simulate a left-click).

• setFlag – Toggles a flag on a specific cell (simulate a right-click).

• quit – Terminates the engine process.

Tip

You can use your own engine with different commands — to do this, you need to rename the five commands mentioned above in the game.gd file to your own.

Note

The engine.exe file included in this project was developed by BDOTimer and is provided solely as an example. For any questions regarding the internal logic or specific behavior of this console application, please refer directly to the original author.