Chess AI Implementation Project

🎯 Project Overview

This repository contains a skeleton implementation of a Chess AI engine written in C++. The project is designed to teach fundamental concepts of game AI, including board representation, move generation, and basic game tree search algorithms.

🎓 Educational Purpose

This project serves as a teaching tool for computer science students to understand:

• Game state representation
• Object-oriented design in C++
• Basic AI concepts in game playing
• Bitboard operations and chess piece movement
• FEN (Forsyth–Edwards Notation) for chess position representation

🔧 Technical Architecture

Key Components

1. Chess Class: Core game logic implementation

   • Board state management
   • Move validation
   • Game state evaluation
   • AI player implementation

2. Piece Representation

   • Unique identifiers for each piece type
   • Sprite loading and rendering
   • Movement pattern definitions

3. Board Management

   • 8x8 grid representation
   • Piece positioning
   • Move history tracking
   • FEN notation support

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• C++ compiler with C++11 support or higher
• Image loading library for piece sprites
• CMake 3.10 or higher

Building the Project

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Running Tests

./chess_tests

📝 Implementation Details

Current Features

• Basic board setup and initialization
• Piece movement validation framework
• FEN notation parsing and generation
• Sprite loading for chess pieces
• Player turn management

Planned Features

• AI move generation
• Position evaluation
• Opening book integration
• Advanced search algorithms
• Game state persistence

🔍 Code Examples

Piece Movement Validation

bool Chess::canBitMoveFromTo(Bit& bit, BitHolder& src, BitHolder& dst) {
    // TODO: Implement piece-specific movement rules
    return false;
}

FEN Notation Generation

const char Chess::bitToPieceNotation(int row, int column) const {
    if (row < 0 || row >= 8 || column < 0 || column >= 8) {
        return '0';
    }
    // Implementation details for FEN notation
}

📚 Class Assignment Structure

Phase 1: Board Setup

• Implement piece placement
• Setup initial board state
• Validate board representation

Phase 2: Move Generation

• Implement basic piece movements
• Add move validation
• Implement special moves (castling, en passant)

Phase 3: AI Implementation

• Develop position evaluation
• Implement minimax algorithm
• Add alpha-beta pruning
• Basic opening book

🤝 Contributing

Students are encouraged to:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Implement assigned components
4. Submit their fork for review

🔒 Code Style and Standards

• Use consistent indentation (4 spaces)
• Follow C++ naming conventions
• Document all public methods
• Include unit tests for new features

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

👥 Contributors

• [Your Name] - Initial work
• [Student Names] - Implementation and testing

🙏 Acknowledgments

• Chess piece sprites from Wikipedia
• Original game engine framework by ocornut

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This README is part of an educational project and is intended to serve as an example of good documentation practices.