DURANDAL DONE DIFFERENT
JULY 15 2025
v1.0.1

2025 marks the 30th anniversary of Marathon 2: Durandal, one of the all-time greats of the 90s FPS era of games. To celebrate, as a community project, we present Durandal Done Different: our take on the 28 maps from Marathon 2, done in a similar style and under somewhat similar constraints to the original Bungie team in 1995. This is not an attempt to "do better" than Marathon 2, or fix perceived problems, but instead celebrate a game that we all love with the sincerest form of flattery.

As a community project, nobody was rejected from participating, and I'm happy to say that the project brings a mix of experienced and newer mappers together.

DDD is *not* vanilla compatible, as we decided that was not a high priority during development. Aleph One is required.

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THE RULES
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1. THE STORY
DDD is not a creative writing exercise. The story and terminal text remain exactly the same as they are in Marathon 2. Levels need to fill the same role and setting as they are in the original game, with the same texture set. The only exception is for level-specific objectives and text; the specifics of a map objective were allowed to change so long as the story role and result doesn't (and terminal text and images were allowed to be changed to reflect that).

2. MAP RULES
Maps are not allowed to exceed 500 polygons. The most polygons in an M2 map is 419, but it could handle more and 500 is a nice round number.

Maps must have only one texture set and landscape, and they have to match up with the original level.

Maps can't have a view longer than 30 WU.

Transparent lines/room complexity: this one was harder to test and the main reason why we opted against vanilla compatibility. Neither Weland nor Aleph One will throw an error for too many transparent lines like the vanilla engine or Forge would, and I wasn't interested in emulating Classic Mac, running a Lua script to inspect or forking the engine to test it out. Instead we went "vibes based" on it: if it looked like the room wouldn't fit in M2, we rejected it. Otherwise if it was "close enough" we let it slide.

3. MONSTERS AND DIFFICULTY
Maps cannot have more than 384 objects and the active monster paths limit was not increased.

In Marathon 2, maps only have three monster types (i.e. Bobs, Fighters, Drones). The technical limitation of this was not interesting to me, but the stylistic limitation is. DDD maps are allowed to have more but they need to contribute gainfully to the map experience and fight design.

Marathon 2 is not a particularly difficult game and DDD isn't meant to be either. Overall the difficulty is probably slightly higher, but only because it's 30 years later and we are more experienced both with the game and how to design encounters.

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THE TEAM
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DA BIG CHEEZ - RyokoTK
MAPPERS - aperturegrillz, BaudrillardBoy, cassis, future you, hypersleep, Kovacs, MurgenROoF, RyokoTK, windbreaker
MENU ART AND MUSIC - hypersleep
ANYTHING ELSE NOT CREDITED - Bungie

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LEVEL CREDITS
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01. Jet Black Intrusion                   | RyokoTK
02. March of the Mud Men                  | RyokoTK
03. Sludge Lodge                          | hypersleep
04. what the bob doin                     | RyokoTK
05. Burn Before Reading                   | RyokoTK
06. When the Bob Breaks                   | windbreaker
07. Mek'leths to Plowshares               | RyokoTK
08. Tar and Feather                       | Kovacs
09. Things Betwixt Gender Coffin          | RyokoTK
10. Get Vidboi'd, Idiot                   | BaudrillardBoy
11. Towering Inferno                      | hypersleep
12. Slippery People                       | windbreaker
13. Sixty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea  | BaudrillardBoy
14. If I Had a Million Rockets            | windbreaker
15. T-R-O-U-B-L-E                         | RyokoTK
16. Fortress of Voided Warranties         | MurgenROoF
17. Hanging for Brain Makes Me Hangry     | hypersleep
18. The Shawshank Delusion                | BaudrillardBoy
19. One For Each of You                   | RyokoTK
20. Good Bobs?                            | aperturegrillz
21. Major Exercise Agnostic Thermogenesis | cassis
22. Corridors of Time                     | RyokoTK
23. Things We Never                       | future you
24. Do Flares Come Standard?              | future you
25. Cyborg Gone to Heaven                 | windbreaker
26. The Wrathful Son Returns              | hypersleep
27. Feel the Heat                         | MurgenROoF
28. Fallen Empire                         | RyokoTK

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CHANGELOG
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1.0.1 [07-15-2025]
- Removed a spawn point in a bad place on Major Exercise Agnostic Thermogenesis
- Added co-op player spawns on Things We Never and Do Flares Come Standard
- Fixed a bouncy door on Major Exercise Agnostic Thermogenesis
- Door in SE corner of Things Betwixt Gender Coffin can now be reopened, just in case

1.0 [07-13-2025]
- Release!