Introduction and concepts

The LlamaMod level editor is a 3D editor for the levels of The Emperor's New Groove (PC, 2000, Argonaut's Croc 2 engine; German: Ein Königreich für ein Lama). It belongs to LlamaMod, a mod manager for the same game: every level you make is installed and played as a LlamaMod mod, and LlamaMod also brings ready-made mods such as a free camera, a randomizer or a mirror mode (see LlamaMod mods).

With the editor you can

build new levels from blocks, ramps, stairs, water, imported 3D models and the game's own tile models, place coins, enemies, checkpoints and the exit, and play them in the game;
change the original levels – move, add or remove anything, repaint textures, change fog, music and light;
share your work as a small .llamalevel file that contains no game data, so anyone with the game can play it.

Note: The editor never changes your installed game or your CD. LlamaMod works on a private copy of the game data and builds every level from your own copy of the game.

What a level is made of

The game stores each level in one .wad file. The editor shows its parts as a tree in the Outliner and as properties in the Inspector:

Part	What it is
Grid and cells	A level is a rectangular grid of square cells. One cell is one grid square in the viewport (4096 game units); the llama is about 0.6 cells tall. Collision is looked up per cell.
Tiles	The building blocks of the original levels: a tile model placed in one cell, turned in steps about the vertical axis. A model can be used by many tiles.
Tile models	The 3D models of the level's tile set with their faces, textures and collision polygons.
Brushes	Editor shapes – floors, blocks, platforms, ramps, stairs, walls, round platforms, fences, trees, water, death planes and imported meshes. They have any size and rotation; when the level is built they are cut into 1×1-cell tiles automatically. See Building geometry.
Objects	Everything with behaviour: the llama (player start), coins, food, checkpoints, the exit door, enemies, villagers, moving platforms, cameras and triggers. The game calls them strats (small scripts). See Objects.
Waypoints	Chains of points that belong to objects: patrol paths of enemies, camera paths, respawn points, the two corners of trigger boxes. See Waypoints and paths.
Zones	Environment and teleport entries: fog, sky colour, ambient light and music of an area, and the doors that move the player to another place. See Environment.
Lights	Directional and point lights that light the object models. Tiles get their light from baked vertex colours.
Visibility regions	Which parts of the level are drawn from where – the engine's way to stay fast. See Visibility regions.
Textures	256×256 texture pages and the texture rectangles on them, with optional animations. See Textures.
Level settings	Name, author, grid size, death plane height, feature flags and the TestLevel chapter. See Level settings.

Collision materials

Every collision polygon has a material number that tells the game what happens when the llama touches it. The important ones:

Material	Meaning
0	normal ground and walls
16	exit floor – the level door (LevelDoor object) ends the level when the llama stands on it in the door's cell
30	no floor / death – the llama falls, loses a life and respawns at the last checkpoint
17, 18	selective collision (used by a level feature flag)
others	special surfaces whose meaning is not known yet

Press C in the editor to see collision coloured by material. The Collision tool paints materials (see Building geometry).

Coordinates

Positions are given in cells: x grows to the east, y is the height, z is the grid row (it grows to the south). The status bar shows the position under the mouse pointer and the grid cell. Angles are in degrees; an object with yaw 0° faces +z.

Engine limit: Tiles and objects can only turn about the vertical axis. Brushes can turn freely – the build converts them into tiles.

Base levels

Object types, their models and scripts, sounds, the sky and the default textures are not something the editor can create from nothing. Every project therefore has a base level: one of the original levels that provides these things. A new level built on Village chapter 1 can use every object that exists in that chapter – coins, checkpoints, villagers, the exit door and so on. Choose a base whose objects and look you want. The base level is fixed when the project is created. Object types of other levels can be added later with Assets → All worlds (Importing objects from other worlds).

Worlds, chapters and the TestLevel

The game has eight worlds – Village, Jungle at Night, River, Jungle by Day, Mountain, City, Catacombs, Lab – each with several chapters. A ninth, hidden world called TestLevel has 49 empty chapter slots; 19 of them (1 and 32–49) are safe to use. New levels go into one of these TestLevel chapters, so they never replace an original level: each project gets its own chapter (shown in the New level dialog and in Level settings). In the game they appear on the world-9 map as "TestLevel – chapter n".

Edited original levels are different: they replace that original chapter while their mod is switched on in LlamaMod.

Projects

The editor saves projects as .llamalevel files. A project stores only your changes to the base level plus your own imported meshes and textures – never the game's files. That keeps projects small (often a few kilobytes) and shareable. When a level is built, the editor reads the base level from your game copy and applies the changes; building the same project with the same game always gives the same result.

LlamaMod lists every project in its levels folder as a mod in the Levels category. Tick it and press Play to play the level – or press F5 in the editor. See Sharing levels.

What you need

The PC game (CD or ISO image): the German or the English version (see FAQ).
LlamaMod – see Installing LlamaMod.
A graphics card with OpenGL 3.3 for the editor's 3D view.
On Linux, Wine to run the game (LlamaMod sets it up).

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