3D Chess

By Thomas Franklin

Overview

For this project, I created a 3D, 2-player chess game (no AI was implemented). The game follow most of the standard rules of chess, and has a "geometric" theme, meaning all the pieces are made up of basic geometric shapes. Each type of piece has a unique idle animation that continuously plays, and a "stepping" animation for when it moves across the board. When a piece is captured, a particle animation, resembling an explosion, appears. This game also features some basic camera movements using the WASD + Q and E keys.

A Youtube demo can be found here.

Controls and Gameplay

The controls for the game are as follows:

ESC: Close the window
W/A/S/D: Rotate the camera around the board
Q/E: Zoom the camera in or out
LEFT/RIGHT Arrow Keys: Change the selected piece
UP/DOWN Arrow Keys: Change the destination square for selected piece
ENTER: Move the selected piece to the selected square

During your turn, you can use the arrow keys to select a piece. Once a piece is selected, it's square is raised, and all the potential movement options are highlighted in green.

Using the up and down arrow keys, you can select which highlighted square you would like to move the piece to.

After you press enter, the pice will start to move towards the targeted square. If the square is occupied by an enemy piece, you will capture the piece, and a particle effect will play.

It is now the next player's turn. This is continued until a player's king is cpatured.

Graphical Elements

This project features the following graphical elemenmts taught in this class:

Hierarchical Modeling

Pieces are all built and animated using hierarchical modeling
Pieces are selected and raised with their square

Camera Transformations

The WASD keys are used to revolve the camera around the board
The Q & E keys are used to zoom the camera
The camera automatically readjusts itself with a smooth animation after each turn

Particle Effects

When a piece is captured, a particle animation is played
Gravity and random initial velocities were used to make the system mimic an explosion
The particles are colored based on the color of the piece

Timed & Sequenced Animations

When a piece moves, a series of stacked animations is played
Each aninimation is triggered after the other, so that they play in sequence
When a piece moves to a new square, and arbitrary amount of animations are stacked in sequence
Slight delays are added for a nice visual effect

Resources

All object models were create using Blender.
All materials used (Pearl, Obsidian, Gold, Silver, and Jade) were found on this table.