Chess

3D version of classic game chess. Built with custom OpenGL engine.

Screenshots

Instructions

Pieces are moved using a drag-and-drop system. To start dragging a piece, use the left mouse button or A button (Xbox controller). When releasing the button, if the piece is over a valid square, it will move there; otherwise, it will return to its original position. Dragging can be canceled by pressing the right mouse button or B button (Xbox controller).

Press Escape to pause the game and access the settings menu.

The player using the keyboard and mouse moves the white pieces.
If a controller is connected, it controls Player 2 (black pieces). Player 2 can only move pieces; they cannot pause or change settings.
If no controller is connected, the mouse is used to move both players’ pieces.

Shortcuts

• F11 — Toggle fullscreen
• Alt + F4 — Close the game

Features

• Physically Based Rendering
• HDR rendering
• Shadow mapping
• Game hot code reloading
• XInput gamepad support

Build

You need Microsoft C/C++ Build Tools. Make sure the MSVC compiler is accessible from the command line. You can verify by running:

cl

• Debug build: run build_debug.bat
• Release build: run build_release.bat

The game expects the following folders:

• bin: place the .exe and required .dll files here
• data: contains all asset folders (models, textures, audio, etc.)

Credits

• Casey Muratori — Creator of Handmade Hero, inspiration for custom game engine architecture
• Joey de Vries — Author of LearnOpenGL.com tutorials
• Sean Barrett — Author of the stb_image library
• Riley Queen — Creator of the Chess Set model (via Poly Haven, CC0)
• Disservin — Author of the chess-library
• The FreeType Project — FreeType font rendering library
• David Reid — Author of the miniaudio library
• Johannes Kuhlmann — Author of the cgltf library

References

• Handmade Hero — Casey Muratori Video series on building a complete game engine from scratch
• LearnOpenGL — Joey de Vries
• Anton Gerdelan — Mouse Picking with Ray Casting
  A clear explanation of ray casting techniques for mouse picking in OpenGL.
• Epic Games — Physically Based Shading Notes (Brian Karis, 2013)
  Foundational reference for PBR workflows and theory used in real-time rendering.
• OpenGL Programming/Modern OpenGL Tutorial Text Rendering 02