You're right. I cheated a bit. I used the TT font to create piece-square bitmaps in photoshop, so 1 bitmap for each piece type on a light and dark square. Those are compiled into the executable as a resource and then I use a BitBlt call to actually copy the image from the resource memory to the right position on the screen.In my experience handling internal color in fonts and rendering them well against a colored background is not so easy
So using the font saves you the time to draw the images of the pieces yourself but its not all.
Thomas...