I'm looking to try and write a chess AI. Is there something i can use on the .NET framework (or maybe even a chess program scripted in Lua) that will let me write and test a chess AI without worrying about actually makign a chess game?
Not sure about what you are trying to do.
If you are looking for a ready-to-use chess GUI, you can use WinBoard. It is completely decoupled from the underlying chess engine(s), thanks to an established communication protocol. Your chess engine thus becomes a console app exchanging commands with the GUI.
A more modern alternative following the same concept is UCI. A GUI supporting UCI is Arena.