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Crate IDs — the serial printed on every box

Every hauling box, pallet and cargo box should be identifiable at a glance: crates live their own life and are never destroyed, so each one carries a unique ID printed on its faces (e.g. ARES-HAUL-8C44B2F9). This page explains where that ID comes from and how to add it to any crate.

Two Ares Hauling boxes in-game, each printed with its own id — ARES-HAUL-0FEC7731 and ARES-HAUL-8D2B2524

The ID is the prop's UUID (it already exists)​

Every networked prop (anything extending GenericProp) already has a UUID — generated on the server, persisted in the ScyllaDB items table, replicated to clients, and stable forever. That UUID is the crate's unique identity: reload the world and the same crate keeps the same id.

So the ID system does not invent a parallel identifier — it just makes that UUID visible, with a readable "company / type" prefix.

The serial shown on the crate​

The on-crate text is COMPANY-TYPE-UUID, for example ARES-HAUL-8c44b2f9-…:

  • id_company and id_type are two @export fields on the prop (defaults ARES / HAUL), set per scene in the Inspector — a pallet could be ARES / PAL.
  • The UUID is the real unique key. On a small face it is long, so id_short_display = true shows only its first block, uppercased (ARES-HAUL-8C44B2F9); the full UUID stays the identity.

The whole string is computed locally from the UUID (GenericProp.serial()), so there is no extra database column, no new network message and no service change — the crate already carries its UUID.

Displaying it: the prop_id_label group ("id-frames")​

To show the id, drop a Label3D node into the group prop_id_label somewhere in the scene — an "id-frame". GenericProp fills every node in that group with the serial as soon as the UUID arrives, so you can put one frame per face and they all show the same id.

The hauling box scene tree in Godot with five IdFrame Label3D nodes, and the Groups panel showing the selected frame belongs to the prop_id_label group

The group is the trigger — not the node name

Detection is is_in_group("prop_id_label"), not the node's name. Name your frames however you like (IdFrameFront, …); just make sure each one is in the group prop_id_label, or it will not be filled.

Adding IDs to a new crate​

  1. The crate's root script extends GenericProp — already true for scenes/props/cargo/* crates (they have a UUID). Static decor boxes (scenes/props/StorageBoxes/*, which extends Node3D) have no UUID and are out of scope.
  2. Add one or more Label3D on the faces, each in the group prop_id_label, positioned and sized on the surface (non-billboard, oriented outward — one per face).
  3. Set id_company / id_type on the root (or keep the defaults), optionally id_short_display.

No code per scene. Reference example: scenes/props/cargo/hauling_box.tscn (5 id-frames: front / back / left / right / top).

The hauling box in the Godot viewport with an id-frame on each face, showing the ARES-HAUL-XXXXXXXX placeholder before runtime fills in the real id