TRACKING AI HELP [2K3]

Okay, so here's something I NEED to desperately get done, and since a friend of mine brought this up that she was doing in her game, I figured why not ask about this now?

So here's the dealio: I have 2 separate instances of this that I need to get done.

1) Where the AI will follow the character, but avoid getting stuck on terrain and the like. Just non-stop following...not hard to get THAT part working, as it's just Toward Hero. But to make the AI not get stuck on terrain? How to deal with that? This is for a chase sequence where if the boss catches the player, they're forced into a fight.

2) A variation of the above, where if you get within seeing sight of the boss, it'll start chasing you, but if you get out of seeing sight of the boss, it will stop chasing you. I'm not sure how easy this one would be to do, or if it's possible to make it stop chasing properly (and not be like "Oh, I'm just gonna slip behind this tree when the boss is right behind me and it'll not see me!").


I DO have some coding worked up, mind you. I just...don't know if it's the way to go about this (or if there's a plugin for this already? If there's a plugin, that'd be super swell especially if it's fully tested and doesn't break anything).






I do not know how worth it it is to do these, but thought it'd be something to try and get working properly. Any help would be appreciated. x_x;;