A chess game, in terminal

---

I just made this game for practicing C++ programming. You can play this game very easily in terminal.

Online demo

To see an online demo, copy and paste the contents of chess-online-demo.cpp at cpp.sh. Note that this is customized for previewing online and may not contain the latest version and may be buggy.

Compiling

This game doesn't use any libraries other than C++ standard library. So, this game doesn't have any extenal dependency and should compile easily with any compiler on any OS. To compile this game, I have created a Makefile . You'll need g++ and make installed on a linux computer. Just open a terminal and change working directory to downloaded repository, then execute this:

make

Or you can also do this:

g++ chess.cpp chess-ui.cpp -o chess

I don't know why, but it compiles even with gcc (GNU C Compiler) on linux. If you don't have C++ compiler but have GNU C compiler, you can try like this (it should also work on your computer, but I'm not sure):

make CXX=gcc CXXFLAGS=-lstdc++

For other compilers and operating systems, use appropriate commands. You can try this:

make CXX=CommandForYourCompiler

If you don't know the command, just Google "How to compile C++ program with your compiler on your OS".

After compiling, you'll get a executable named chess . As this executable doesn't depend on any files in the repository, you can place it anywhere you want.

Playing

To play this game, just start the executable by executing

./chess

After starting, you'll see a output like this:

  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
8 | r | n | b | q | k | b | n | r |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
7 | p | p | p | p | p | p | p | p |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
6 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
5 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
4 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
3 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
2 | P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
1 | R | N | B | Q | K | B | N | R |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
    a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h

Here uppercase letters are pieces of white and lowercase letters are pieces of black. The meaning every letters are:

Letter	Piece
K	King
Q	Queen
B	Bishop
N	Knight
R	Rook
P	Pawn

After the board, you'll see a prompt which will want command. Commands are:

Command	Meaning
play	Enter playing mode
move	Just one move for white, one for black
reset	Reset the board
show	Show the current state of board
load	Load game from file
save	Save game to file
exit	Exit the game
q	Exit the game

To start playing, just type play and hit enter. You'll see a prompt again like this:

white >>>

Here, white means it's white's turn. In the prompt, type the square where the piece is now, then hit space key, and type the square where the piece will go. Here is an example:

white >>> e2 e4
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
8 | r | n | b | q | k | b | n | r |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
7 | p | p | p | p | p | p | p | p |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
6 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
5 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
4 |   |   |   |   | P |   |   |   |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
3 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
2 | P | P | P | P |   | P | P | P |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
1 | R | N | B | Q | K | B | N | R |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
    a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h

Here, white moved the pawn at e2 square to e4 square.

After entering white's move, you'll see a similar prompt again, like this:

black >>>

It means it's black's turn. Now enter your move and you'll see the result after the move.

To get out from playing mode, type exit and hit enter. You'll return to the default mode. Note that this command is disabled for black, as this will cause black to lose his chance to move.

Saving your game

If you want to save the game, get out from playing mode, then save it. The syntax is like this:

save FileName

Loading your saved game

To load your game, start the game and load it. The syntax is like this:

load FileName

Or, you can load the game at start time like this:

./chess FileName

For enthusiasts and developers

In this repository, the file chess-ui.cpp contains the main function, chess.h contains declarations of namespaces, classes, functions and chess.cpp contains their definitions.