Why reinvent a graphical interface in the terminal? If we are playing chess in the terminal, we are likely happy to accept abstractions and such. You could use normal letters for the different pieces, perhaps using lowercase for black and uppercase for white. Even the "grid" could be an optional setting, placing a slight emphasis on user skill in being able to visualize the grid on their own.
A B C D E F G H
8 r n b q k b n r
7 p p p p p p p p
6
5
4
3
2 P P P P P P P P
1 R N B Q K B N R
This to me feels more like truly playing chess in the terminal. Add a non-interactive session mode, for example "chesst game123 view" to produce a view of the game, and "chesst game123 e2 e4" to move the pawn infront of white king two squares up. Naturally moving a piece can by default also print the new board state, after the opponents move. Implicitly prompting you to move again, or to just leave the terminal and do something else.
kazinator
In the FOSS world there is a protocol between chess-like board games and user interfaces, the primary examples of which are the XBoard GUI client, and the GNU Chess engine.
If you write an XBoard-compatible terminal client, then it can just work with GNU chess and other back ends.
sa-code
Slightly relevant, here's a version of Wordle in the terminal built using go:
The unbearable pixel graphics on such a large display make it unplayable. It's a nice one, though. I think I should shrink the size of my terminal window. Or can you make everything smaller? Need Keyboard support.
pwnOrbitals
On that same note, is there also an app to play chess wrong in my terminal ?
TheBlight
Cool but you could always play ASCII chess in your terminal by telnetting into FICS.
FergusArgyll
The opening in your demo is disgusting, way to ruin a Sicilian....
Very cool program though :)
pixelmania
Fantastic work on Termichess!
anthk
gnuchess did it before, and better.
Also, telnet freshchess.org 5000. FICS rules.