In the winter semester of 2013, I took a module at the Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences that taught us the basics of OpenGL. For this we had to work on a project in small groups during the semester. The assignment was to create a 3D scene with user interaction and lighting using OpenGL. So our group of three decided to implement a chess game (not necessarily creative, but doable). The original idea behind it, however, was a chess game with living humanoid pieces that get bored, for example, when they haven’t been used for a long time or hit another piece and fight it. After some research (so about 10 min :P) I found a game, which corresponded quite exactly to my ideas: Battle vs. Chess Its scope was way too much for one semester, but it was still a good inspiration.

Blender wireframe rendering of the chessboard

And if you are really interested here is the SourceForge link, where you can download the source code or maybe someday executable binaries:

OpenGL Chess on SourceForge