Janggi is a strategy board game popular in Korea. A derivative of Chinese chess and similar to the more common Western Chess, Janggi is played between two players on a 9x10 gameboard. Unlike Western Chess, in Janggi, pieces are placed at the intersection of two lines rather than in the spaces formed by intersecting lines. In addition to the 9x10 grid, Janggi is unique in that it has a 2x2 block of diagonal lines forming a "Palace" in the center of each player's defensive end. The palace introduces unique movement opportunities for many of the pieces as well as restricting the Emperor and his Guards to those spaces.

For complete rules, refer to this article

This implementation of Janggi was created as my portfolio project for Introduction to Computer Science II through Oregon State University's Computer Science program.

The guidelines for the project required that we implement the engine for a Janggi game which would be played as shown in the engine below:

Here's a very simple example of how the class could be used:

game = JanggiGame()
move_result = game.make_move('c1', 'e3') #should be False because it's not Red's turn
move_result = game.make_move('a7,'b7') #should return True
blue_in_check = game.is_in_check('blue') #should return False
game.make_move('a4', 'a5') #should return True
state = game.get_game_state() #should return UNFINISHED
game.make_move('b7','b6') #should return True
game.make_move('b3','b6') #should return False because it's an invalid move
game.make_move('a1','a4') #should return True
game.make_move('c7','d7') #should return True
game.make_move('a4','a4') #this will pass the Red's turn and return True

In the interest of self improvement (...and to simplify debugging of an otherwise complex game,) I researched the best way to implement a GUI for my game and after experimenting with a couple of options, I settled on the PyGame library.

Beginning Board

Using public domain images, I was able to create a realistic board for the game to be played on.

In order to make the program easier to debug as well as trying to flatten the learning curve for new players, I chose to implement a move highlighting system. When a piece is selected, all possible moves will be highlighted in red as seen below. In Janggi, unlike Western Chess, a player may pass their turn by not moving. I implemented this feature by having a player select a piece and then make a move to their current space. That is, double clicking a piece will pass your turn. If a piece is selected that you do not wish to move, press the "Z" key to deselect the current piece.

Example Move

Currently, the game is completely playable by two players on a local machine. The game will end when one player leaves the opponent's Emperor in "Checkmate" where the 1) the Emperor has no legal moves and 2) the remainder of the defending player's army has no legal moves which would defend the Emperor.

TO DO

• Implement a "____ Player Wins" pop up when the game ends. Currently, the winning player is printed to the console.
• Package game so that it can be rune as an executable
• Improve UI by showing a move log and images of captured pieces
• Improve UI so game can be exited without force quitting
• Implement a basic AI so a player may play alone versus the computer
• Find additional piece images and allow the player to select their pieces and the board's surface