Chess (Windows)

Overview

A Windows chess application built with WinUI 3 and C#, backed by a C++20 chess engine. The UI and engine live in separate repositories: the engine is consumed here as a git submodule and exposed to the C# layer via P/Invoke through a plain C API (DLL).

Features

• Modern UI: Built with WinUI 3 (Windows App SDK), targeting Windows 10/11.
• Game Controls: Undo the last move or reset the board at any point.
• Captured Pieces Display: Visual tally of captured pieces for both players.
• Personalization: Choose board and piece styles, set a player name for multiplayer sessions, and adjust SFX, atmosphere, and master volume independently.

Technology Stack

Layer	Technology
UI	C# / .NET 8, WinUI 3 (Windows App SDK 1.7)
UI architecture	MVVM (CommunityToolkit.Mvvm), dependency injection
Engine	C++20 - see Chess-Engine
Interop	P/Invoke via a plain C API (DLL)
Testing (C++)	GoogleTest + CTest
Testing (C#)	xUnit, Moq

Project Structure

Chess-Windows/
├── Chess.Engine/           # Git submodule — C++ chess engine
├── Chess.Game/             # WinUI3 C# application
│   ├── Services/           # P/Invoke bindings, game service, communication layer
│   ├── ViewModels/         # MVVM view models
│   ├── Views/              # XAML pages (game, home, settings, shell)
│   ├── Models/             # Board, captured pieces, move history models
│   ├── Styles/             # Board and piece style loading
│   └── Chess.Game.csproj
├── Chess.Game.Test/        # xUnit tests for the C# layer
├── Chess.sln               # Visual Studio solution
├── scripts/                # Python build automation modules
└── build.py                # Build entry point

Prerequisites

• Visual Studio 2022 (17.x) or later, with the .NET desktop development and Desktop development with C++ workloads
• .NET 8 SDK
• Windows App SDK 1.7
• Windows 11 SDK (10.0.26100 or later)
• CMake 4.0 or higher
• Python 3.x
• Git — required for submodule initialization and build number derivation

Getting Started

1. Clone

git clone --recurse-submodules git@github.com:Diversiam90815/Chess-Windows.git
cd Chess-Windows

If you already cloned without --recurse-submodules:

git submodule update --init --recursive

2. Build

build.py handles the full build in one step: it builds the C++ engine submodule via CMake, then builds the C# application via dotnet build.

Release build:

python build.py -b

Debug build:

python build.py -b -c Debug

For day-to-day development, opening Chess.sln in Visual Studio is fine — just run python build.py -b once first so the engine DLL is in place.

build.py Flag Reference

Flag	Long form	Description
-p	--prepare	CMake configure only (no compile)
-b	--build	Build engine and C# application
-c CONFIG	--configuration	Debug, Release (default), or RelWithDebInfo
-a ARCH	--architecture	x64 (default) or ARM64
-pl PLATFORM	--platform	Ninja (default), VS2022, or VS2026
-t	--runtest	Run C++ unit tests via CTest

Testing

C++ engine tests:

python build.py -b -t    # build then run
python build.py -t       # run against existing build

C# tests — from Test Explorer in Visual Studio, or:

dotnet test Chess.Game.Test/Chess.UI.Test.csproj

Future Plans

• Onboarding flow for new players
• Dynamic audio score

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.