Crate Editing

[Shadow]

Trying to figure out how to do crate editing in the pc version of n sane trilogy using Alchemist.
To explain what I mean, I don't want to move the crates location, I just want to change the type of crate. as I was originally writing this I thought of something and figured it out mostly. I cant figure out how to make a crate something that isn't supposed to be in that level. for example put a nitro crate in n sanity beach. if anyone knows how to do this and can explain it i would appreciate it because i want to create a mod similar to ards all nitro mod just a lot more reasonable to play casually making some akuaku crates, more life crates, tnt crates, or other changes needed that dont require you to lag the game) how reasonable it is to manually edit every single crate in every single level is something that will be decided by how complicated the answer to my question is.
Thank you for reading this expect a short demo within a week (assuming doing this is possible)

[BlaZeMaN]

I frankly don't know how Alchemist handles things, but I can answer your question a bit, if you manually modify the Crates.igz file for the level of choice, using a Hex Editor to open the file.

Now to answer your question proper, as long as you change the string code of the igz file with one that contains the same total number of letters, you are able to change certain crate types to your heart's content.
A few examples include:
Bounce to AkuAku or Random
Basic to Nitro or Arrow
The game is able to recognise some of these combinations since you don't change the code too much, but one particular part called Crate_"Insert crate name here"_Spawned_gen.
For example) As demonstrated, you can change any of the above strings in the code and the game won't crash at all (from the crate modifications at least).
Crate_Arrow_Spawned_gen. or Crate_Nitro_Spawned_gen. or Crate_Basic_Spawned_gen.
Crate_Bounce_Spawned_gen. or Crate_AkuAku_Spawned_gen. or Crate_Random_Spawned_gen.

I'll test for more possibilities going forward but for now, I hope this clears things up a bit.

[toxiccognition]

Just got back into this recently, this is an old post, but showing the Alchemist route may be useful to someone.

In the L000_LevelName_Crates.igz (or bonus stage in this example)
Under Content you'll find the crates. Click the crate you want (here I've clicked CEntity: Crate_Basic_Iron001)

Click the part of the hex you want to change,
- Line 3 part 1,2,3 are the X, Y, Z co-ordinates of where the box is (in float).
- Line 5 part 1 is your Crate type. Select that and the "Offset" dropdown menu will show what that hex represents and what you can change it too.
- Other parts do other stuff... presumably

When changing to another crate type be sure to change it to the one ending "_entityData_gen", so changing to TNT would be "Crate_TNT_entityData_gen".
Results may vary for crates not already in that level? Don't really know. Also might not work well with the in-built randomiser.

[dremor848484]

Just got back into this recently, this is an old post, but showing the Alchemist route may be useful to someone.

In the L000_LevelName_Crates.igz (or bonus stage in this example)
Under Content you'll find the crates. Click the crate you want (here I've clicked CEntity: Crate_Basic_Iron001)

Click the part of the hex you want to change,
- Line 3 part 1,2,3 are the X, Y, Z co-ordinates of where the box is (in float).
- Line 5 part 1 is your Crate type. Select that and the "Offset" dropdown menu will show what that hex represents and what you can change it too.
- Other parts do other stuff... presumably

When changing to another crate type be sure to change it to the one ending "_entityData_gen", so changing to TNT would be "Crate_TNT_entityData_gen".
Results may vary for crates not already in that level? Don't really know. Also might not work well with the in-built randomiser.

i tried to do that, in crash bandicoot 1 (level 1) and i am failing greatly :/
crates do not appear O_o
i mean, instead of 1 crate of a different type, i just get no crate al all

do you have any extra info about how to convert 1 crate type, into another crate type ?
like a tutorial for dummies :'(

edit:
it seems that only some crates can be used (arrow, akuaku)
some crates cannot be used (random, extra life)

[Shadow]

i tried to do that, in crash bandicoot 1 (level 1) and i am failing greatly :/
crates do not appear O_o
i mean, instead of 1 crate of a different type, i just get no crate al all

do you have any extra info about how to convert 1 crate type, into another crate type ?
like a tutorial for dummies :'(

edit:
it seems that only some crates can be used (arrow, akuaku)
some crates cannot be used (random, extra life)

Hello, sorry for the late answer but I may be able to help you if you still have any questions, to answer your original question in the most clear way you cannot easily import crates that are not already in the level template which you seem to have figured out in your edit.

ARD explains this pretty well in this video and it should also explain how crate spawning works which could solve any future problems you have with it.
https://youtu.be/z_I1L60InCs?si=8xmZYZfNDP396t1P

At about 2:40 he puts up all the crate types usable in n sanity beach specifically which may be helpful

It is possible to import crate templates from other levels I’m just not smart enough to figure that out. ARD goes over how to import things from other levels pretty well in this video.
https://youtu.be/RDfVmRAkOAk?si=eBPZLCJL9jUqxdH-
However just doing that will have unwanted side effects such as the crate count, I have messed around with attempting to use pkg files like that to import crates into levels but its very annoying to work with, I would personally recommend waiting for the level editor to come out within the next several decades but if you don't have a good computer that tool may not be usable as I would imagine its very resource intensive.

Something which may or may not be helpful is there are 2 ways to edit crates, the entityData_gen method which has already been explained above and the other method is to go into the component data table list and go to the CommonSpawnerTemplate and change the exnm entry on the 5th row of the 3rd column (in alchemist) as shown in this image

The advantages of this method include the fact it changes every single type of that crate to the new selected type which can help with bulk crate editing (an example being wanting to change all the aku aku crates in a level to basic crates to make it more difficult) another advantage is the amount of exmns in a crates file is generally way lower than the amount of strings so it should be much easier to find what crates you can choose from. I do not know of any performance/efficiency differences between these 2 methods and what side effects each ones have but I personally use both of them depending on the situation.

I’ve attached a sample mod below which may be helpful to look into if the image wasn't helpful, it changes all basic crates to extra life crates, all random crates to nitros and the first bounce crate to a wumpa fruit.

Sample mod: https://www.mediafire.com/file/39t8ae3qw...lcmod/file (not the biggest fan of media fire but its the thing people trust the most for whatever reason)

I hope this was helpful I'm not the best at explaining things, I wish you luck.