03 / Project case study

Two-Player Chess Game

A fully playable, two-player chess game with standard rules, built from scratch in Java with Swing and AWT.

Java / Swing / AWT / OOP / Multi-threading

Overview

The problem.

Building a complete chess game requires implementing complex rule logic including piece movement, check detection, castling, en passant, and pawn promotion—all while maintaining an interactive UI.

The approach.

A single-process Java desktop application with a Swing/AWT GUI, featuring a polymorphic piece engine, dedicated game loop thread, and 'simulate-then-commit' move validation pattern.

What the project focuses on.

Two-player local turn alternation
Full legal move validation for all 6 piece types
Check, checkmate, and stalemate detection
Advanced rules: castling, en passant, pawn promotion
Interactive UI with move highlighting and visual feedback
60 FPS fixed-timestep render loop
Sprite rendering with ImageIO

Screenshots

Chess game GUI screenshot when opponent is checked — Black's king is in check, with the game displaying a warning banner and highlighting the threat during Black's turn.

Chess game GUI screenshot when opponent is checkmate — Checkmate scenario with Black winning the game, showing the victory banner and the final board position.

Engineering notes

A problem worth understanding.

Challenge: Preventing moves that would leave the king in check.
Cause: Validating moves directly on the live board risked corrupting game state.
Solution: Used a 'simulate-then-commit' pattern with temporary piece lists for validation before applying to the live board.
Result: Consistent board state with reliable move validation.

The takeaways.

Designing a polymorphic piece hierarchy with shared state and specialized behavior.
Managing game state and preventing corruption through validation patterns.
Building interactive desktop applications with Java Swing/AWT and custom rendering.
Implementing game-loop concurrency patterns for consistent frame rates.
Using inheritance and method overriding for rule-specific logic.

Source code