© Created by: Christos Kormaris, Athens 2020
Programming Language: Java
Video for this project:
Download .jar executable:
A traditional Chess game implementation using Minimax AI.
The Minimax AI is based on code from the laboratories of the Artificial Intelligence course,
of the Department of Informatics, of the Athens University of Economics and Business.
I created this project from scratch, line by line.
I started this project as a hobby, on March 2020, during the COVID-19 quarantine.
This project was a test for my skills as a programmer, and I'm very happy with the result.
Of course, my free time and a little luck were some assets too.
Fun fact:
I decided to make this project, after I applied for a job interview for the Forex company XM.
The exercise I had to solve was a Chess problem in Java.
I had to make an algorithm that could find if a Knight piece could visit a position on the Chess board,
in less than n moves. The solution was a simple BFS algorithm.
For the purpose of this task, I designed a GUI.
After I was hired in the company, I continued the implementation of the GUI, adding more and more components every time.
Eventually, I implemented the movement of all the Chess pieces, the checkmate, the stalemate,
the rest of the draw conditions and most of the other Chess functionalities.
The GUI is very customizable. You can enable/disable sound, change square colors, GUI style, or even the number of the Chess board rows! Also, there 2 GUI types you can choose from. The first one uses Buttons and the second one uses Drag & Drop. In addition, you can use FEN (Forsyth–Edwards Notation) positions and start playing the game from there.
You need Gradle and Java 1.8 or above to compile and run this project.
Recommended IDE: IntelliJ IDEA
There are 2 Java modules inside this project:
- The
apimodule contains all the logic for the Chess game. It can be used for the implementation of any Chess GUI. - The
guimodule contains common constants, libraries and utilities for the GUIs. It includes theapimodule. It contains a GUI implementation using JButtons, in the classButtonsFrame. It also contains a GUI implementation using a JLayeredPane and the Drag & Drop method, for moving the pieces, in the classDragAndDropFrame. TheGUIclass instantiates the Buttons GUI. The user can later switch to the Drag & Drop GUI, using the settings.
- The
AIis also customizable. There are 3 AI types:
- Minimax AI
- Minimax with Alpha-Beta pruning AI
- Random Choice AI
- There are 4 evaluation function implementations for the Minimax AI:
SimplifiedevaluationPeSTO(Piece-Square Tables Only) evaluationWukongevaluationShannonevaluation
You can also change the "Minimax AI" max depth. The "Minimax with Alpha-Beta pruning AI" is faster, but sometimes it performs worse than the simple "Minimax AI".
Some openings have also been included in the implementation of this Chess game. They can easily be extended.
I am using the api module for the implementation of the following Android game, which I've also created:
The Java Swing Buttons GUI was inspired from:
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21077322/create-a-chess-board-with-jpanel
- http://www.java2s.com/Tutorials/Java/Swing_How_to/Layout/Create_Chess_layout_using_GridLayout.htm
The Java Swing Drag & Drop GUI was inspired from:
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64598967/trying-to-drag-something-using-a-jlayeredpane
- https://gist.github.com/skd1993/288fb21707263ae03799
The evaluation functions were based on:
- https://www.chessprogramming.org/Simplified_Evaluation_Function
- https://www.chessprogramming.org/PeSTO%27s_Evaluation_Function
- https://github.com/maksimKorzh/wukongJS
Other sources: