Terminal-Chess

A lightweight two-player chess game for the Terminal, written in Ruby

Screenshot

Installing

The easiest way to use terminal_chess is to install it via the Rubygem. Note that the Gem is way out of date when compared to the repo

Otherwise, clone this repo directly and run:

# Download Repo
$ git clone [email protected]:at1as/Terminal-Chess.git
$ chmod +x lib/terminal_chess.rb

# Install Dependencies. Only dependency is the colorize gem
$ bundle install

Running

Local Gameplay

In this mode, the game will launch in Terminal and allow the player to make moves for both sides of the board

# Run program in terminal

$ ruby lib/terminal_chess.rb

Multiplayer

Terminal Chess can connect to an opponent using websockets over ngrok. The requires first starting the server:

# The webserver must be running either on one of the players machines
# Or somewhere else. This will need to be running before either client can connect
$ lib/server.rb 

# The host running the server will need to tunnel the connection through ngrok
# on the free plan the URL will change every time ngrok is launched
# therefor the `9cf13f35` component will need to be passed to the clients in order
# to connect
$ ngrok http 4567
 => http://9cf13f35.ngrok.io -> localhost:4567

And then the client can connect via the NGROK environment variable. if this environment variable is set, the client will attempt to start a session over the network. If the connection 

# Replace the NGROK enviroment variable with whatever URL the ngrok server returned
$ NGROK=9cf13f5 ruby lib/terminal_chess.rb

# => [:message, "INFO: Awaiting second player..."]

And once the second client connects, game on!

$ NGROK=9cf13f5 ruby lib/terminal_chess.rb

# => [:message, "INFO: Connected to remote player"]
# => [:message, "SETUP: You are player 2"]
# => [:message, "INFO: Starting game!"]

Any subsequent clients that attempt to connect while the game is in session will have their connections dropped

Testing:

$ bundle exec rake test --trace

Notes

  • Built and tested on macOS 10.11 with Ruby 2.4.0
  • Neither player can currently be automated

TODO:

  • Update Gem to reflect the last two years' repo changes...
  • Automate one of two players (note: tried this. Not easy to make it competent)
  • Switch written Chess pieces to unicode characters (note: tried this. Didn't look great)