I'm looking at creating a bit of variety. Simple chains that follow a path are pretty easy, but what about chains that are more "wild." It seems like they are partly IK chain based, but I'm not so sure, considering that I don't think older platforms had enough power to really do IK with this many "links/bones" as these games have. So it seems to me that in general this should not be too difficult to do. I'm pretty sure it wasn't done pre-drawn, also considering the limited space constraints of these old platforms. I have found a few videos so you can see what I'm talking about.
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[/media] at time 1:54. The guy talking is pretty stupid sounding, but it is a good example, which is the scorpion boss from Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past(SNES) You can see the scorpion tail is "wagging" for the most part, but then gets shot out towards link.
[media]http://www.youtube.c...?v=NcXuvqwIztc[/media] is the final boss to the SNES game BioMetal( a really difficult Shooter). You can see the "arm" chain thing at the bottom that moves around pretty fluid and random, and doesn't appear to follow a given path, or be constrained to an IK chain type thing either.
There are other examples, including bosses from the Contra series of games.
So, does anyone have any insight how to create this effect. I'm sure the ones where the chain objects simply follow the leader is easy, as you can simply have each one follow the next one in line, but how about the fluid circular motion, etc...?
Thanks in advance for the help.