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A CA (cellular automata) is a virtual 'smell' that is emitted from agents, such as food and plants, in Creatures Evolution Engine games such as Creatures 3, Creatures Village and Docking Station. Often the agents are invisible so as to give the appearance an area is emitting CAs; for example, an agent in the Grendel Jungle emits Grendel Home Smell, which entices the Grendels to live there. CAs are called "scentons" in the help menu for the smell emitter. They enter through the foot of a creature where the creature contacts the ground, and are detected there, and intepreted by the smell lobe. The reason why creatures smell with their foot touching the ground is to avoid changes which could happen when creatures turn around.[1]

The command CACL is used to link the CA to an object in the Creatures' minds, for example, that smell 18 means a gadget. In DS, this can be seen in the Bootstrap cos file z_DS agent smells.cos. In C3 this can be seen with the Bootstrap cos file z_agent smells.cos. The agent included with the Butterfly Norn associates the flower smell with plants and flowers.

They travel between rooms which are linked horizontally, not vertically. To link vertical rooms (as is used in the lift shafts) the command LINK is used. In DS, this can be seen in the Bootstrap cos file "lift ca linkers.cos".

They are used in Creatures Village, Creatures 3 and Docking Station as follows:

Number Name Agents CACL linked to
0 Sound --
1 Light --
2 Heat --
3 Water (from the sky, often used by plants to grow) --
4 Nutrient (used by plants to grow) --
5 Water (bodies of) --
6 Protein Fruit
7 Carbohydrate Seeds
8 Fat Food
9 Flowers Originally, linked with nothing - the Butterfly Norn agent makes this link with Plants and Flowers.
10 Machinery Machinery
11 Creature egg smell Creature Eggs
12 Norn Norns
13 Grendel Grendels
14 Ettin Ettins
15 Norn home Norn Home
16 Grendel home Grendel Home
17 Ettin home Ettin Home
18 Gadgets Gadgets
19 (unused) --
Editnorn This stub could use more information.

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