How to Draw a Space Invader
14 comments
·August 19, 2025h4ny
What a delightful read. Thanks for all the thoughts put into the problem solving, the writing, and the presentation!
Martin_Silenus
Nice.
Ironically, this is much like saving the planet by creating invaders… the hacker way, without using brute force AI.
You deserve your upvote.
scotty79
If you refresh the page the invader that gets generated as you read changes.
Waterluvian
I’m surprised and impressed that it built a vector that it rasterized.
I wonder how well you can do by having a pseudo-random kernel walk and then mirroring it.
lyr-7d1h
This is basically what I did! A modified version of a random walk to generate "invaders" with a gradient color. You definitely get some interesting shapes.
https://tinyurl.com/creagen-invader
Sorry for using an url minifier the original url is too long. I'm using a custom web editor I built for generating this. Still working on shorter urls for it.
This and including muffinmans solution was part of a coding challenge for Creative Coding Amsterdam, for anyone interested and in the area definitely check it out https://cca.codes
balamatom
Nice, just the other day I coded up some quick 2d shooter demo and realized I have no idea how to draw interesting sprites for it. What you're doing here with drawing the generated vector onto different sizes of grid is brilliant. A sort of structured pulsation. Same simple technique can be used for both "breathing" animation of a critter and for animating it into bigger, badder forms. Bravo.
At this point (actually before even writing the comment) If your blog had a RSS feed I'd have subscribed to it... but (at least according to my RSS plugin) it doesn't, so I fear I will miss out on your next inspiring writeups. Consider adding one, if you feel like it :-)
https://muffinman.io/invaders/#/size:15/main-seed:began-ever... is a favorite so far
joemasilotti
This would be awesome as a random avatar generator!
lzyuan1006
Interesting, it takes a lot of imagination to do it
FridayoLeary
It's interesting that space invaders was developed entirely by one person.
Goldenbowl
Awesome!
Goldenbowl
[flagged]
This is one of the best mobile experiences I’ve had reading an article.