Chess.NET

Screenshots

<sub>Main Menu


LAN Game Discovery


AI Opponent in Action</sub>

Overview

Chess.NET is a C# chess application built with SplashKit. It implements standard chess rules and supports multiple game modes: local 2-player, AI opponent, custom board setup, and networked multiplayer. The project is intended both as an educational object-oriented programming demonstration and as a playable chess application.

Table of Contents

• Chess.NET
  • Screenshots
  • Overview
  • Table of Contents
  • Features
  • Requirements
  • Quick start (PowerShell)
  • Game modes and behavior
  • Troubleshooting
  • Contributing

Features

• Local 2-player on the same machine
• Play against AI (remote API with local Stockfish fallback)
• Custom board setup screen
• Networked play using UDP discovery + TCP move transport
• Full chess rules: castling, en passant, promotion, check/checkmate, draw conditions
• Time controls, timers, save/load, and autosave

Requirements

• .NET SDK 7.0+ (project contains outputs targeting .NET 9.0; install the latest SDK)
• SplashKit runtime (the repository contains SplashKitSDK.dll in bin/*/net9.0/)

Quick start (PowerShell)

Open PowerShell (pwsh.exe) in the project root and run:

Restore and build (Release):

dotnet restore
dotnet build -c Release

Run from source (debug):

dotnet run --project . -c Debug

Publish and run the published executable (Windows x64):

# Publish
dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained false /p:PublishSingleFile=false

# Run the published executable
& .\bin\Release\net9.0\Chess.exe

Notes: if you see SplashKit errors when running the built executable, copy SplashKitSDK.dll to the executable folder or install the SplashKit runtime.

Game modes and behavior

• Local: two players on one machine with full rule enforcement
• AI: attempts to use a configured remote API (ChessApiBot); falls back to the included Stockfish binary (StockfishBot)
• Custom setup: drag-and-drop piece placement and validation
• Network: discovery via UDP, game transport via TCP, moves encoded as algebraic coordinates (e.g. e2e4)

Troubleshooting

• Missing SplashKit: copy SplashKitSDK.dll (from bin/Release/net9.0/) into the same folder as the executable or install SplashKit.
• Stockfish not found: ensure the binary exists at Resources/Scripts/ and is executable.
• If the UI fails to render or the app exits, run the Chess.exe from bin/Release/net9.0/ to view myeasylog.log for runtime logging.

Contributing

All contributions are welcome.