Overview
A chess engine written in C++ that uses bitboards for efficient board representation and move generation. The engine implements the minimax algorithm with alpha-beta pruning to evaluate positions and select optimal moves, enabling adversarial AI gameplay.
This project is a reiteration of a project from the Introduction to Programming course at the University of Antwerp. In the following semester, I reimplemented the engine with a cleaner architecture and improved code organization.
Features
- Bitboard-based board representation for performance
- Legal move generation (including castling, en passant, promotion)
- Minimax search with alpha-beta pruning
- Basic evaluation function (material + positional heuristics)
- Move ordering to improve pruning efficiency
- Command-line interface to play against the engine