Thread: Checkers Game Help? (extremely inexperienced)

Hi, everyone, so I'm a high school senior who has a very open-ended java project due for my final in an AP computer science class that is java-based. I signed up to do a checkers board game, the problem is, I feel like the class is very self-dependent. Our teacher doesn't say anything, just sits on her computer, and all we do all period is go through an online textbook which, in hindsight, isn't terrible but is very primitive and only teaches one isolated thing at a time (methods, arrays, strings) and I feel like I have no idea how to start a game like this. For starters, how do I make it so that (whatever it may be; eclipse, netbeans, blueJ) opens a new window when the code runs to display the (in this case) board game, and then program each piece individually? Do I have to design the board game myself using numerical dimensions? I just feel like there's so much I don't know.

Sorry for all the text and questions, I guess I'm just wondering if there's any general guide or pointers you guys can give me or maybe another website/lesson plan that is more detailed in this kind of stuff? Thanks for anything in advance.