A blazingly fast, bitboard-based C++ chess engine featuring an optimized, selective-rendering terminal GUI.
Have you ever wanted to play chess right in your terminal, but wanted it to actually look good?
This project delivers exactly that: a robust C++ Chess Engine paired with a dedicated Terminal Renderer capable of displaying full-fledged pieces. Built on highly optimized bitboards (both standard and magic bitboards), this implementation offers a massive performance leap over traditional array-based architectures.
It is designed to serve as a rock-solid foundation for further development, such as building a chess AI or a more complex chess application.
- Bitboard Architecture: Uses normal and magic bitboards for ultra-fast move generation and evaluation.
- Optimized Terminal Renderer: Utilizes custom ASCII art and updates only the specific parts of the board that change, minimizing screen flicker.
- Comprehensive Rule Enforcement: Full implementation of standard chess rules:
- Move validation and check/checkmate/stalemate detection.
- Special moves: En Passant and Castling (both kingside and queenside).
- Pawn promotion, the 50-move rule, and draw detection.
The engine reads raw character inputs to navigate the board and handle selections.
- W -> Move selector Up
- A -> Move selector Left
- S -> Move selector Down
- D -> Move selector Right
When a pawn reaches the final rank, input one of the following numbers to choose your promotion piece:
- 1 -> Knight
- 2 -> Bishop
- 3 -> Rook
- 4 -> Queen
⚠️ Important Note on Terminal Size: Due to how terminal drawing functions, you must manually scale your terminal window so the entire board fits without wrapping. An alignment text block will appear at startup. UseCtrl++orCtrl+-to resize your terminal until the text is perfectly aligned. Once aligned, press any key followed byEnterto start the game.
The project includes a pre-configured Makefile for easy compilation using g++.
Ensure you have g++ and make installed. On Linux (Debian/Ubuntu), you can install them via:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential
To compile the source code and generate the standalone static executable (chess_engine), run the following command in the root directory:
makeTo remove the compiled binary and prepare for a clean rebuild, run:
make cleanIf you intend to fork this project or integrate its components into your own application, keep the following structure in mind:
Renderer Class: Handles the custom ASCII rendering. It uses selective updates designed specifically for terminal efficiency.
Input Class: Responsible for reading raw keyboard characters and translating them into engine actions.
Board Class: Controls game state. Inside the Move Piece function, when a pawn triggers a promotion event, the board requests the target piece by calling the getRawChar method from the Input class.
Customizing Selection Behavior: If you want to change how pieces are selected (e.g., typing coordinates instead of using a cursor), modify the SelectionFunction inside the Board class. You can alter it to read target ranks and files directly from a different input buffer.
- Magic Board Implementation By Code Monkey King
- ASCII Art Core: Built using tools from ASCII-ART by 7IRE.
- Legacy Version: Check out the original, array-based predecessor: (Chess V-1) Based on Arrays.