hanzo / chess

Simple chess implementation

chess

Simple chess implementation

Classes

Match - represents a match between two players 
	Properties
		Turns - List<Turn>
		CurrentTurn - int
		TopPlayerColor- PieceColor 
	Methods 
		ResetBoardToStartPosition()
		NextTurn()
		PreviousTurn()
		GoToTurn(int turn)
Turn - a single players turn (white or black, not both) 
	Properties
		ActivePlayerColor - PieceColor 
		Moves - List<Move> (need list for multi-piece moves like castling) 
		IsCheck - bool
		IsCheckmate - bool
		IsStalemate - bool 
PieceMove - the change in position of a piece as part of a turn. Multiple pieces can change state in a single turn
	Properties
		Piece - Piece
		StartPos - Position 
		EndPos - Position
Piece - one of the pieces on the board
	Subclasses 
		Pawn
		Knight
		Bishop
		Rook
		Queen
		King
	Properties
		Color - PieceColor 
		CurrentPosition - Position
		Starting position - Position
		PieceType
	Methods
		GetValidMoves
Position - a location on the board
	Define as struct containing two ints
		A1 -> 0,0
		B1 -> 1,0
		Null when piece has been captured 
	Needs to be reversible when moving backwards through the match history 
Player - one of the two players in the match 
	Properties
		PlayerName - string
		Color - PieceColor 
		Pieces - List<Piece>
	Methods
		PromotePawn(Pawn pawn)
		HasAvailableMoves
PieceColor - enum to represent the colors white and black
	0 - white
	1 - black

How to store move history? Two approaches: 1. Store a numeric representation of the entire board at each turn Pros: simpler, no additional computation needed to jump to the nth turn 2. Store objects representing each piece as well as a list of turns as operations that can be applied to the board. To set the board to the nth turn, step forward or backward through the list of turns, applying each operation to board as you go Pros: Less memory used - don't need to store 8x8 integer array for every turn Can store state for each piece, e.g. where did the piece start, how many other pieces has it captured, etc

I had originally planned to use the second approach, but now that I've started writing the code I've found that I need a representation of the full board state (e.g. 8x8 integer array) in order to calculate valid moves and to allow callers of the chess engine to be able to display the current board state without needing to expose the entire class hierarchy of the engine (match, players and their pieces). I still like the idea of keeping objects to represent each piece since it will allow interesting state tracking - for example at the end of the game you could answer questions like "which type of piece did White capture the most pieces with".

Special moves Castle - rook and king move irregularly En passant - irregular pawn capture Pawn promotion - pawn replaced by another piece

Progression of a turn Select a piece with valid moves available If in check, this limits the available moves Make a valid move As a result of the move, look for check, checkmate or stalemate

Should support PGN format for chess match history
Need to think more about access levels - only a few classes need to be public