Chess

A simple Java chess implementation built for learning and experimentation. The projects includes piece and board display, player implementations (human and AI), and a Game runner.

Requirements

• Java 17 or newer

Getting Started

Open a terminal in the project root and compile all source files:

javac *.java

Run the game:

java Game

The Game class is the application entry point. When launched, it creates a game instance and uses BoardDisplay to render the chess board and handle user interaction.

How to Play

When the game starts, you will be prompted to configure both White and Black players.

For each side, choose:

• A player type: human, smart, or random
• A player name

Press Enter to accept the default values (human with names White/Black).

Example:

White player type (human/smart/random) [human]: smart
White player name [White]: Bot

Black player type (human/smart/random) [human]: human
Black player name [Black]: Alice

Player Types

HumanPlayer

Allows a user to make moves through the graphical board interface.

If a side is configured as a human player:

1. Click the piece you want to move.
2. The selected piece should highlight.
3. Click a valid destination square.

When it is a human player's turn, the game will also display a terminal message such as:

White player's turn: Alice

RandomPlayer

Chooses a legal move uniformly at random from all available moves.

SmartPlayer

Uses a minimax-style search algorithm to evaluate future positions.

The algorithm executes the following steps:

• Evaluates current position by value (piece count and strength)
• Simulates future move sequences
• Chooses the move with the best worst-case outcome
• Searches several plies deep (currently 4 plies by default)

Project Structure

Game Logic

• Game.java — application entry point and game loop
• Board.java — chess board implementation
• Move.java — move representation
• Location.java — board coordinates

Grid Infrastructure

• Grid.java
• AbstractGrid.java
• BoundedGrid.java

These classes provide the underlying grid abstraction used by the board.

Pieces

• Piece.java
• King.java
• Queen.java
• Rook.java
• Bishop.java
• Knight.java
• Pawn.java

Each piece class defines its movement behavior and legal move generation.

Players

• Player.java
• HumanPlayer.java
• RandomPlayer.java
• SmartPlayer.java

These classes define the available player implementations.

User Interface

• BoardDisplay.java — graphical board display and user interaction handling

Project Extensions

Possible improvements include more advanced AI search and evaluation functions, alpha-beta pruning, opening books, additional chess rules and edge cases, and enhanced UI features.

Acknowledgments

This project was created as a course project for AP Computer Science with Data Structures (2023).

Author

Linda Zeng

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.