A 16-bit-style, local two-player chess game written in modern C++ and rendered with OpenGL. Every rule of chess is implemented — from castling and en passant to all five ways a game can draw. The project is a portfolio piece exploring game-engine architecture and 2D graphics programming from the ground up: a hand-written sprite renderer, a bitboard move generator, and a state-machine driven application loop, with no game framework underneath.
- Complete chess rules — legal move generation, check/checkmate/stalemate, castling, en passant, and pawn promotion.
- Every draw type — stalemate, threefold repetition, the fifty-move rule, and dead positions (insufficient material).
- Bitboard engine — positions and move generation are represented with 64-bit bitboards.
- Custom 2D renderer — a small sprite/shader/texture layer built directly on OpenGL and GLFW, plus a resource manager and a finite-state-machine game loop.
- Original pixel art for the board, pieces, UI, and cursor.
BitChess builds on macOS and Linux with CMake.
- A C++17 compiler (Clang or GCC)
- CMake 3.16 or newer
git(used only to auto-download GLFW when it isn't already installed)
GLFW is used from your system if it's installed; otherwise CMake fetches and builds it automatically. To install it yourself (optional, for a faster first build):
- macOS:
brew install glfw - Debian/Ubuntu:
sudo apt install libglfw3-dev - Fedora:
sudo dnf install glfw-devel
glad,glm, andstb_imageare vendored inlib/, so there is nothing else to install.
Clone the repo, then either run the helper script:
./build.sh # configure + build
./build.sh run # configure + build, then launchor use CMake directly:
cmake -B build
cmake --build build -j
./build/bit_chessThe game locates its assets relative to the executable, so bit_chess can be
launched from any working directory. To rebuild from scratch, delete the
build/ directory.
- Mouse — click a piece to select it, click a highlighted square to move.
- Esc — quit.
See Chess Programming Resources for background on the bitboard techniques the engine is built on.
Gameplay is feature-complete; these are polish and infrastructure items:
- Start menu (new game, load game, options, quit) and game-over screen
- Save / load games and PGN / FEN export
- Audio system and configurable color schemes
- Custom window decorations and resizing
- Native Windows build
- All draw types implemented — every rule of chess is now complete.
- Pawn promotion.
- Fixed a castling bug where the move-making function skipped castling rights.
- Fixed en passant bugs (passant table not resetting each move; moves generated in incorrect scenarios).
- Castling and en passant fully implemented.
- Legality checks for pseudo-legal en passant moves.
- King-in-check visualization.
- Checkmate pop-up with winner display.
- Piece movement and illegal-move filtering (check detection).
- Pawn double-move blocking and a king move-generation fix.
- Basic GUI, custom pixel art, and the start of the engine architecture.
See LICENSE.