Chess3001

Chess3001 is a full-stack chess application consisting of a powerful UCI chess engine written in C++, a Ruby Sinatra REST API, and a React frontend. The engine uses advanced chess programming principles and optimizations inspired by Stockfish.

🏗️ Project Structure

The project is organized into three main components:

• Engine: A high-performance C++ chess engine with UCI protocol support
• Backend: A Ruby Sinatra REST API that interfaces with the engine
• Frontend: A React-based web interface for playing against the engine

🚀 Chess Engine

The core of Chess3001 is a powerful chess engine written in C++ that implements various advanced chess programming techniques.

Features

• Bitboards for efficient board representation
• Magic Bitboards for fast sliding piece move generation
• Principal Variation Search algorithm for finding the best moves
• Quiescence Search to optimize the search algorithm
• Move ordering to enhance alpha-beta pruning efficiency
• Linear static evaluation of pieces
• UCI protocol for GUI communication
• Improved move generation time
• Complete UCI command implementation
• Additional C++ algorithm optimizations

Building the Engine

# Navigate to the engine directory
cd engine

# Build the engine
make build

# Run the engine directly (UCI mode)
./chess3001

Use make help to see all available build options.

Using with Chess GUIs

If you prefer to use the engine with a standard chess GUI:

1. Download a UCI-compatible chess GUI (e.g., Arena Chess)
2. Configure the GUI to use the chess3001 executable
3. Start a new game with the engine

🌐 Backend API

The Chess3001 backend is a Ruby Sinatra REST API that provides an interface between the frontend and the chess engine.

Features

• Simple JSON-based API for interacting with the chess engine
• Endpoints for retrieving board state, making moves, and resetting games
• Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) support for frontend integration
• Custom command handling for communicating with the UCI engine

Setup

# Navigate to the backend directory
cd backend

# Install required gems
gem install sinatra json sinatra-cross-origin

# Start the API server
ruby chess_api.rb

The server will run on http://localhost:4567.

API Endpoints

Get Board State

GET /api/board

Returns the current board state in FEN notation.

Make a Move

POST /api/move

Request body:

{
  "move": "e2e4"
}

Makes the specified player move and returns the updated board state.

Reset Game

POST /api/reset

Resets the game to the starting position.

Implementation Notes

• The API uses the fen command (instead of d) to retrieve the FEN string representation of the board
• The engine returns the raw FEN string without any prefix
• All endpoints use the /api/ prefix for consistency and clarity

💻 Frontend

The Chess3001 frontend is a modern React application that provides a user-friendly interface for playing against the chess engine.

Features

• Modern React-based user interface
• Interactive chessboard with drag-and-drop move capability
• Real-time game state synchronization with the backend
• Responsive design for desktop and mobile play

Setup

# Navigate to the frontend directory
cd frontend

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start the development server
npm start

The frontend will be available at http://localhost:3000.

Implementation Notes

• Uses the native fetch API with explicit CORS mode and headers
• Connects directly to the backend at http://localhost:4567
• Includes detailed error handling for connection issues

📋 Prerequisites

Before getting started, ensure you have:

• For the Engine:

  • Latest version of g++ compiler
  • make build system
  • Windows, Linux, or macOS

• For the Backend:

  • Ruby 2.6+
  • Sinatra gem
  • JSON gem
  • sinatra-cross-origin gem

• For the Frontend:

  • Node.js and npm
  • React

🤝 Contributing

To contribute to Chess3001:

1. Fork this repository
2. Create a branch: git checkout -b feature_branch_name
3. Make your changes and commit them: git commit -m 'Add some feature'
4. Push to the original branch: git push origin feature_branch_name
5. Create a pull request

See GitHub's documentation on creating a pull request.

👥 Collaborators

Pedro Luis

📝 License

This project is licensed under the terms specified in the LICENSE file.

⬆ Get to the top