Complete timed chess matches in Minecraft's native Paper dialog UI

Chess turns Paper's native dialog system into a live, clickable 8x8 board. Challenge another player, choose a clock, and play a complete match without chest menus or a physical board.

Highlights

• Native dialog board: 64 individually clickable squares in a clean, live interface.
• Complete move handling: castling, en passant, promotion, check, checkmate, and stalemate.
• Timed games: 17 presets from one-minute bullet to five-hour games, with increment options.
• Useful board feedback: legal moves, selection, last move, check, captures, coordinates, and both clocks can be displayed directly in the dialog.
• Player-friendly controls: flip the board, offer or accept a draw, resign safely, close the dialog, and reopen an active game at any time.
• Resource-pack aware: the textured board is bundled, can register itself with ResourcePackManager, and has an optional Unicode fallback.
• Folia ready: game mutations, clocks, commands, dialog sends, and pack delivery use Folia-safe scheduling.
• Configurable: tune sounds, expiry timers, board behavior, labels, and messages.

See it in game

Requirements

• Java: 21
• Server: Paper 1.21.11 or Folia based on the same API
• Optional: ResourcePackManager

This plugin requires Paper's native Dialog API and does not run on a standard Spigot server. The chess engine and the board pack are included in Chess.jar; ResourcePackManager is not required.

Getting started

1. Put Chess.jar in the server's plugins folder and restart.
2. With ResourcePackManager installed, Chess registers its pack automatically.
3. Without ResourcePackManager, host plugins/Chess/resourcepack.zip and set the public URL at resource-pack.url in plugins/Chess/settings.yml.
4. Have one player run /chess duel <player> <time> and the other run /chess accept <player>.

Set ui.dialog.use-glyphs: false for standard Unicode pieces without the custom textures. Set resource-pack.use-resourcepack: false when another system will merge or distribute the pack.

Commands

Time modes: 1, 1|1, 2|1, 3, 3|2, 5, 5|2, 5|5, 10, 10|5, 15|10, 30, 60, 120, 180, 240, and 300. In increment modes, 5|2 means five minutes plus two seconds after each move.

All players can use Chess; version 1.0.0 has no permission nodes.

Support

• GitHub repository
• Issue tracker
• Discord community