Llama Level Editor – design brief

Goal (from the project owner): a fully fledged, graphical 3D level editor for "Ein Königreich für ein Lama" (Emperor's New Groove PC) – "everything the Argonaut developers probably had available. Support everything that is possible. Nicely organised, easy to use, well designed." Results are shared as LlamaMod mods.

Scope

Create new levels from scratch (primitive building blocks like levels/testwelt, tile painting, objects).
Open and modify ORIGINAL levels (move/add/delete objects, tiles, waypoints, zones, lights …).
Import own 3D models (OBJ, glTF) as level geometry incl. textures and collision.
Import/edit textures.
Everything the format allows: tiles (TRAK models on the MAP grid, height, rotation, alt models), strats/objects with parameters and flags, waypoint chains / paths / camera nodes, environment+teleport/respawn zones (the 90-byte records), fog per zone, lights (LGHT), visibility regions (region grid + masks), vertex colours / lighting bake, collision polygons and materials (e.g. 16 = exit floor, 30 = death/no floor), level name, music, kill plane.
Play-test button: build + launch the game straight into the level.

Architecture

Same Gradle project (~/projects/llamamod), packages under com.eliasmueller.llamamod.editor:
- editor.model – scene model (pure data, no UI): Scene, nodes for tiles/brushes/meshes, objects (strats), waypoints, zones, lights, regions, materials, assets. Undoable commands (editor.model.cmd).
- editor.io – project file format, original-level import (WAD → Scene), build (Scene → WAD) on top of format and levelbuild.
- editor.render – OpenGL viewport (LWJGL 3 via lwjgl3-awt AWTGLCanvas inside Swing), textured + vertex-coloured rendering, wireframe/collision overlays, picking, gizmos.
- editor.ui – Swing shell (FlatLaf, same look as LlamaMod): menu/toolbar, viewport, outliner (tree), inspector (properties), asset browser (models, object types, textures), status bar.
Launch: from LlamaMod ("Level Editor" button/tab) and standalone --editor [file].
Natives: LWJGL natives for linux-x64 and windows-x64 must be packaged (both packages).

Project format (`.llamalevel`)

A zip: level.json (scene) + assets/ (imported meshes, PNG textures) + thumbnail.png.
Contains NO original game data. Original-level edits store only a reference (base: "t1l1m001") plus edits (diff); new levels reference a base level for its object code (STPC) and textures (default t1l1m001).
Deterministic build: same project + same CD → byte-identical WAD.
Versioned schema (formatVersion), forward-compatible loading (unknown fields kept).

LlamaMod integration

Every .llamalevel in <data>/levels/ (plus "Import level…") appears as a mod in category levels.
New levels occupy TestLevel (world 9) chapters 1..49; the user picks a free slot (default: next free). Edited original levels replace that level's WAD.
Conflicts (two mods writing the same WAD) are reported clearly.

Conventions

English everywhere, only necessary comments, no commits, ./gradlew spotlessApply build green.
Reuse format, levelbuild, mods.debug (collision/marker knowledge), mods.mirror (env-zone/light layouts).
Test in game with tools/apptest.py (private silent PulseAudio, own Xvfb display; user watches :5).
UI screenshots on Xvfb (llvmpipe OpenGL works there) – look at them, iterate on design.

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