Compet-N: incoming and discussion, part 1 [please post in part 2 instead]

[dew]

c-n wads are mostly boring. the only real test of skills is rjspace9f on zdaemon. god, i wish i could TAS that... i'd break the 20min barrier for max and get this awful curse off my back.

[Archy]

1ntru said:

All I know is that I've been watching Doom speed demos since the 90's but I only started speedrunning in 2011. The reason? I couldn't play without WASD, so I lacked the skill to record Vanilla demos. Though, in 2011 I discovered PrBoom existed and got into recording.

And why can't you use WASD with Vanilla Doom?

dew said:

c-n wads are mostly boring. the only real test of skills is rjspace9f on zdaemon. god, i wish i could TAS that... i'd break the 20min barrier for max and get this awful curse off my back.

I really hope you're joking...

[Andy Johnsen]

1ntru said:

While it is amazing to see some of my all-time favorite players coming back from "retirement" as well as posting on this thread, it kinda saddens me to see Andy's and Juho's "prejudice" against non-Vanilla players/new players.

1ntru - I find it amazig how inverted your perception of whats been written here is. As I've stated several times, I think its great that theres still people playing and recording for the game, despite the less optimal conditions than what we were fortunate enough to have, when everyone had an OS that could run vanilla Doom, and cheating was more detectable. If you go back and read my posts you'll see that, I'm sure. On the contrary, what Ocelot and myselfe got annoyed by was what we perceived as an unfair assessment of the capabilities of "top-level players" some years ago.

Nor do I have anything against port-based players. One of the best players to grace this game was primarily a port-based player from the US. He started out doing deathmatch in Csdoom at age 14, continiued with Zdaemon and became the definitive all time top deathmatcher on that side of the ocean. He also did some amazing compet-n runs during the twilight of "incomming" post Hegyi, you might know him as Hi Jango, or Chewy. Truly one, if not the most naturally skilled Doomer we've seen.

As for compet-n beaters recorded on other ports, I would hope that as many recordbeaters as possible could be done at the identical terms with dosbox and 1.9, but its still fun to see stuff like Viles pl32-306. If theres ever another compet-n however, portbased recordbeaters would complicate matters, perhaps.

Anyway, theres several promising new players around, and a few fullblown "doomgods" still at it. Keep it up, and dont think we're grumpy old men sitting around thinking you all suck :} I would never complain about free entertainment.

[Rizera]

Archy said:

And why can't you use WASD with Vanilla Doom?

Movement looks weird for some reason. Both while running as well as when mouse steering. I can't get used to it. Not only that, I like to have Z, X and C in order to select the Rocket Launcher, Plasma and BFG, also something not possible on Vanilla (as far as I am aware of). I might try to record a Compet-N recordbeater someday, though, if I can ever get used to it.

Andy Johnsen said:

On the contrary, what Ocelot and myselfe got annoyed by was what we perceived as an unfair assessment of the capabilities of "top-level players" some years ago.

I thought it happened only once, with one player, who actually admitted cheating and regreted it?

I know Hi Jango, and I've seen some of his amazing demos. I didn't know his history, that's cool to know though :)

Vile never seems to lose it, sad thing he abandoned Vanilla as well.
Doom demo recorders is a dying breed, and Vanilla recorders are even more seldom. I sadly can't imagine the best new players switching all, out of the blue, to Vanilla.

[Vile]

1ntru said:

Vile never seems to lose it, sad thing he abandoned Vanilla as well.

I would record in vanilla for a lot of these recent demos if I could do so effectively on my current computer, which is actually my laptop. :P

It's a Windows 7 machine. I briefly played with dosbox and the markc mouse fix but it didn't help, at the time. I can dedicate some time to getting it to work before I continue, if it's possible. I'm not going to stop recording if it doesn't work out, though. It would be nice to record for the original executable but I still want to have fun recording. :)

[Altima]

I'm to the point I only use vanilla if I'm either in the mood, or if it's for a Compet-N record. As you've seen from a few of my recent works, most notably in Doom the Way id Did, I use PRBoom-plus/GLBoom-plus for the most part. I have a few issues with DosBox/vanilla Doom, but otherwise I would still record in it.

The only thing I can't stand is things like, using Jump/Crouch on vanilla-intended maps/mapsets. I personally see it as a form of cheating, but it has no direct impact on my daily life, so if that's what you like, go for it.

[Creaphis]

Thanks for your post, ocelot. It's interesting to see where you're coming from. Also, being able to respond to one of my incendiary posts with calm reason is a rare gift.

ocelot said:

I think part of what caused all these flames was that many people don't realize how passionate people like myself or Andy were/are about speedrunning. I spent a fucked-up amount of time between 1997 and 2008 upon becoming good at this game, in both single and multiplayer. I used a strong expression because in retrospect, I really wish I had invested all that time and energy on something more useful that gaining bragging rights in an fringe internet community. Well, it's done. And with a huge investment like that comes a certain amount of pride. When you've (mis)spent a decade on something, you're inclined to be a bit touchy about having your efforts slighted. That's why the "we are the shit, the old farts couldn't hang if they were here" mindset I read between the lines of Sav88's initial comment rubbed me the wrong way. and I'm pretty sure it did Andy too, though he's way too polite to say it. But let's not get into that anymore, as the flames seem to have died down already and people seem friendly with each other.

I think that pride is, at times, a defence mechanism. We must reinforce our feelings of pride in an accomplishment when another, deeper part of ourselves feels ashamed. I suppose that my prideful/shameful accomplishment would be climbing within the top 1000 Runescape players in the mid-aughties. Presently, I am completely unable to defend that criminal waste of time. Speedrunning, however, is something you can be legitimately proud of. You don't need to give yourself a hard time about how you "invested" that time. If you hadn't been speedrunning, you would have been playing another game, or watching TV, and there wouldn't have been anything wrong with that either. A man needs entertainment. Speedrunning is arguably a step above idle gaming on the list of "worthwhile uses of time," anyways. The reward of speedrunning isn't just "bragging rights." I still speedrun even though it's extremely rare that I record something worth sharing. When I speedrun I'm pushing myself; I'm seeing what I'm capable of. I'm practicing not just a useless fringe skill, but determination, and that's something that you can apply anywhere.

1ntru said:

I really did wish I started speedrunning back when Compet-N existed, but I was only an appreciator back in 1997. All I know is that I've been watching Doom speed demos since the 90's but I only started speedrunning in 2011. The reason? I couldn't play without WASD, so I lacked the skill to record Vanilla demos. Though, in 2011 I discovered PrBoom existed and got into recording.

I had to spend a long and intimate evening with the DosBox config file, but I got vanilla Doom running on my system so that it feels (almost) like PrBoom+. The only thing I'm missing is being able to bind weapons to arbitrary keys.

[Looper]

I have always played FPS-games with arrow keys, so I keep playing with them even under vanilla. So I use CUSTOM keys to get weapon binds to closer to the arrow keys and "use" to the right mouse button as a single click. Problem?

[Archy]

Creaphis said:

I had to spend a long and intimate evening with the DosBox config file, but I got vanilla Doom running on my system so that it feels (almost) like PrBoom+. The only thing I'm missing is being able to bind weapons to arbitrary keys.

I don't know if COMPET-N would consitter this cheating or not but in DOSBox, you can use the keymapper to make any key act like any other key, so, I could make the "X" key be the BFG 9000 by replacing it with the "7" key in the DOSBox keymapper.

[Belial]

Creaphis said:

If you hadn't been speedrunning, you would have been playing another game, or watching TV, and there wouldn't have been anything wrong with that either.

You are so very wrong.

I wish I had my 5 years back as well.

[Altima]

Belial said:

You are so very wrong.

I wish I had my 5 years back as well.

Personally, I regret nothing of my time spent speedrunning. Even if I wasn't around on the scene for as long as Anders, Ryback, Radek, Ocelot, Vono, Vile, Williamson, Hegyi, etc... (I use the ones from when I started because those names have been around for at least a decade now)... I regret not a single moment of my time to speedrunning. Sure, I could have done other things, but would it have been as personally rewarding?

To me, it's more of a personal goal. It is proof to me that I can do more than I thought capable of doing, and even if I'm not the best speedrunner out there (considering I'm garbage to a lot of players), it's a personal statement to myself that, yes, I can do something and be proud of it. Even if that is something that a lot of people would find unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

[Looper]

ocelot said:

Also, people may be forgetting that I am taking a risk by not uploading those things. Someone else could accomplish the same things while I procrastinated and then s/he'd get all the glory. You all should bear that in mind. The risk DOES exist.

I have always thought personally, when I'm trying to break a record (in this case it was map24), "Did sedlo already made this? If he did, it's his record as he did it BEFORE me." It also made me wonder if he did map24 nomo in 35.xx with S40 too, as it seems to be possible (I have 36.14 at the moment and yes, it's nothing compared to no02246x). The problem here is that there's a doubt that someone has already done it, so every record I have made (for iwads), have always felt like a silver medal, as one doesn't know which records are already broken, so it's not motivational at all (maybe that's what you want, as you seem to regret that you have played doom so much). I just can't get rid of the feeling that someone has already done it 5 (or more) years ago and the thing what I'm little proud of, is actually rubbish second, third, fourth place for that map.

My aim was to break Ian's map02 nomo 24.97 (with s40 only) and I'm pretty sure I would have posted 24.8x. As I now know that there are at least two 24.6x, I'd have thought "my demo is crap" if I had done and posted it. Anything slower than current record just doesn't feel worth uploading or to equal some UV-Speed/max/tyson 5 years later.

For me, the record has always belong for the guy who made it first, not for the guy who posted it first. Reason? Because in their own head, they know they were better because they made it first and it's also the truth. For me, truth isn't "what most people think", I don't give a crap about that shit.

[ocelot]

I think we just have to accept that we will probably never see every record that has been recorded, and most definitely not if we count nomo too. Hi Jango, that bastard, did e2m5 nomo in 26 seconds and never even let me see the demo. I think he just deleted it. But because it was him, I have zero doubt that he actually pulled it off. Who knows what else he casually beat and then didn't bother keeping the file. Some records have been lost for good. Not much point in dwelling on that fact since it won't bring them back.

Nomonsters running was something that I really enjoyed, but since DANG died so early, I stopped uploading stuff there pretty soon. And you know what, it might have been for the same reason as with compet-n. There were lots of great runs rotting without recognition in the incoming dir, so I figured "meh" on uploading more. I think besides the uploaded ones and map2, I put in some work and recorded pretty good (back then anyway) runs on map17, map31, e1m3, e2m1, e2m3 (warmup for UV Speed), and e3m5 (same thing). I think my map31 time was around 29.80, but I can't recall the rest. I think many times my goal was beating the official record (the one in the the record tables) by half a second.

I doubt I was ever even the worst guy about hoarding records. Sedlo and Hegyi were definitely known to do so. I remember when the fight over Ev13 Speed broke out between Waldon and Dev, Sedlo mentioned to me in a subordinate clause that he had had a faster time for years. He especially was way more concerned about dropping people's jaws than about gathering points. And if he felt like his run wouldn't drop jaws, he'd not bother uploading at all.

I think the introduction of the Golden Cybers contributed to making me much the same way. Especially after that, I always wanted my name to be a kind quality guarantee, and I'd rather hold on to a record-beating run than upload it if it didn't meet my aesthetic standards.

For instance, the dare-I-say-optimal coop maxkill of map01 that NC and I uploaded in 2004 was not our first or even fastest record-beater. We rejected a completely legitimate 16.85 because it didn't look quite as nice as we would have preferred, and we wanted to have a strong candidate for the Best Cooperative Run trophy. ;)

As for my own unreleased runs, it's not simply about "this place not being good enough." I was working on that stuff pretty passionately in 2005 when it still seemed as if c-n were going to be updated. When there was no update, my motivation began to sag. There was amazing stuff in /incoming that wasn't getting due recognition. That meant neither would my runs. I nonetheless kept working at it less frequently, until eventually system upgrades came and there was no longer a proper way to run the vanilla executable or to get quickstart, which was another blow. However, all this talk, plus the watching of demos, has somewhat whetted my appetite for speedrunning again. I think if Compet-N had a successor and I had quickstarts, I'd still hold on to those runs and try to polish them a bit more. =P

Paska: Sedlo generally didn't care very much for nomo though. It wasn't prestigious enough. Not enough glory. ;) So I think you can feel safe that he's not hoarding anything in that category that has you beat. I think map02 was a rare exception. All the biggest guns with the exception of Hi Jango tried their hand there, so the best times got to be quite badass. All this reminiscing is somewhat bringing back the sting of havig missed the exit switch in those 24.54's. :/

Also, you mentioned that you "would have uploaded" a 24.80. Where? Here? Do the people on this thread actually watch nomo runs or care about them? Is there a record table being maintained somewhere?

Another question: what port do you record with? Are the resulting demos vanilla-compatible? Do you get quickstart? It's really hard to imagine a 36.02 without the jump on map24 without quickstart.

[blob1024]

Paska said:

I have always played FPS-games with arrow keys, so I keep playing with them even under vanilla.

so do I, and to a certain degree I'm happy about the fact I was always too lazy to change into WASD which most prefers for speedrunning. I even use the crap space bar to use switch and open doors, which forces me to temporary rely on mouse h+v movement for the time (yea less than h third of a second probably, but doesn't matter in my case).
I'm happy about using the arrowkeys and a 4:3 aspect ratio, and not even the highest resolutions playing, but this still isn't "enough" for me to get used to C-N. Point is that there's a general trust in everybody else not abusing cheap methods for.. no reason at all. Especially it would ruin everything. Another point is that having an active HUD helps, and reduces the amount of fail/slow attempts while demorecording, thats for sure. Right now, I either don't feel like I'd stand much chance to break important records under dosbox easily or without insane amount of time required (which I don't have cus of work)

a couple of you also explained why you are (and I'd do the exact same in your position, since I'm "proud" of my results in the "best times" of other gaming such as LoD or RO for example) so "strict" accepting your records challenged or compared/beated to newer port's one
but for many, beside the ones who enjoyes to follow the C-N archive a little, and the ones ultra good such as Looper, Tatsurd and Vile to name a few, there's practically not much need to "prove" they aren't possibly cheating

I personally would suggest every player capable of recording under C-N rules to do so, but I don't feel good enough and I was scared off by many excellent doomers (time of death, Rizera-1ntru actually) who stated the mouse movement is somehow not even close to what we are now used to and we can achieve the records with

what 1ntru wrote is important anyway; please don't do the mistake to miscredit all the efforts done by newer players in the last years and the future, some are very cool results and would also be important for us to see some interest or opinion of yours about those and how the speedrunning proceeds :)
keep in mind 99% of the currently active best doomers exactly know what means a C-N entry and the efforts you all put in those. Lately I was impressed by E1M7 uv-max records challenge for example.

btw Anders, Id really love if you'd spare a comment or just watch, my video of "Speed" I was very happy to get a pseudo fair run there, even if your record there was probably a first exit and not hardworked. (I bet you did it in a coffee break in 10mins ;p )

[TimeOfDeath]

Doomed Speed Demos Archive: http://doomedsda.us/

Doomworld Demos Forum: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-speed-demos/

-nomonsters demos thread: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-speed-demos/53174-nomonster-speedrunning/

All demos that are posted on the doomworld forum are added to the DSDA by Andy Olivera. There are tables for all wads and players have their own profile. Compet-N demos have a "C-N" next to the time. If you post a demo on the forum as an attachment, you can see how many times the demos have been downloaded. There's clearly still an interest for compet-n-style speedrunning. It's pretty much guaranteed that people will download demos on C-N wads. All of your hard work won't be wasted, the record tables will be more accurate, and players can see what they're competing against.

Deleting and hoarding records doesn't benefit anyone! :)


Belial - you better take that back... ;)

[SAV88]

I agree that hoarding records is not useful, so for nostalgic value I'll upload one of my oldest, worst, slowest and least hardworked demos, which was lying on my hard drive for over six years. Done in November 2005 on my old computer with Windows ME, when my control skills were *extremely* lacking.

Doom2 MAP26 NM100S in 1:11. It doesn't even use the yellow key jump, so further improvement will be very easy (even though Sedlo said "best here would be 1:15").

ns26-111.zip

[Looper]

-nomonsters demos thread: That's the thread where I have uploaded my runs, sadly mostly me though. Czechs guys have recorded many runs for their own page tho, but I haven't seen any nomonsters-activity from them lately. I have thought that at least those Czechs know that some of those are hard worked. I have always liked their nomonster runs, so I have kept uploading pretty much just for them, but I'm sure there are more than just Czechs who are interested in that category as some of those runs are downloaded quite many times :)

I'm using dosbox v.0.74 with doom/doom2 vanilla. I get "some kind of" quick start. I can't strafe run from the very beginning but I can run straight forward. It takes about 6 ticks then it will begin to straferun and it costs about 2 tick for not being able to straferun from the very beginning (it's between 2 and 3 ticks, as far as I know, can't confirm), but it's based on what kind the beginning of the map is. Obviously no time is lost when playing map18 nomo.

Well, that 36.03 (.02?) wasn't that hard (when comparing to 32seconds). It would have been 35.9x if I hadn't failed those last 3 doors and it wasn't that nice run (I still have the demo as I have no reason to delete it, nor my failed attempts). I was just full of that map so I didn't make the 35 as I felt there was no point doing it. 35 does require slightly more skill than 32, but the jump works about 25% chance, no matter what you do, so doing 32 requires more work. I was very unlucky with the jump just when I knew I was about to break the record.

If you haven't checked that nomonsters thread yet, I hope you like the demos and better not miss those Czechs record either (see Gusta's link!)!

[dew]

i do follow looper's crusade to wipe out all dang and czech-n nomo doom2 records. :) my map01 nomo was fairly hardworked, so i was kinda pissed off to learn i didn't even beat ian's sr40 run, heh.

[ocelot]

Dew...

Ian's run was NOT s40.

5.20 with s50 is not bad at all.


As far as I know mine and AdamH's 5.25 is the optimal time with s40. Anyone who proves me wrong will seriously impress me. That shit was HARD. Really...I mean it was admittedly in 2001 and I got a bit better later, but that was also a short map and you can only improve upon it so much before hitting the ceiling. 5.25 felt pretty much like a perfect s40 run. I didn't see where one could possibly have gone faster.

[Vile]

I got Dosbox running a bit better, mouse sens feels off but maybe I am just not used to Vanilla Doom. I can't get fullscreen to work properly though because it runs extremely slow. I've followed some config suggestions but nothing has helped yet. The best I could do was lower my windows resolution to 800x600 (the lowest it goes, lol) and play in a window.

[ocelot]

blob1024 said:

what 1ntru wrote is important anyway; please don't do the mistake to miscredit all the efforts done by newer players in the last years and the future, some are very cool results and would also be important for us to see some interest or opinion of yours about those and how the speedrunning proceeds :)
keep in mind 99% of the currently active best doomers exactly know what means a C-N entry and the efforts you all put in those. Lately I was impressed by E1M7 uv-max records challenge for example.

And what was this E1M7 uv-max records challenge?

I took a peek at the demo site youall have. Well...it's a start. I didn't realize there was an actual site up. It's way messier that compet-n was though, and it's harder to find the actual records. I'd appreciate if the fastest runs in each category for each map were always on top of the list. Also, some of my very own runs are missing! Who did I piss off to be so discriminated against? Take e3m5 for example. It doesn't even list the fastest single-player UV Speed, neither mine nor HJ's pacifist run. What's up with that?

Nomo runs seem to be listed only occasionally, and they're not the actual fastest runs. Hum...

It seems a sporadic collection of demos that fails to offer an competitive speedrunner an accurate list of the current records on each map? Or am I missing something?

[xepop]

Doomedsda doesn't yet have all the old c-n records for doom and doom2 but all new ones are uploaded there. Andy has been in a process of uploading the old ones for a while, so they will be there eventually. Still, that's the first place to look for a demo.

[dew]

ocelot said:

I didn't see where one could possibly have gone faster.

i was experimenting with the eastbound wallrun to the exit door, but it takes some ridiculous finger action when moving around the corner, so it usually (read: always) took too long to snap to the wall.

anyways, glad to hear my exhausting grind at least beat all the sr40'ers of the olden days. :)

[Memfis]

ocelot,
Missing C-N demos are here: http://doomedsda.us/compet-n
And there is also a list of C-N records maintained by vdgg: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/885044

[Rizera]

ocelot said:

And what was this E1M7 uv-max records challenge?

I took a peek at the demo site youall have. Well...it's a start. I didn't realize there was an actual site up. It's way messier that compet-n was though, and it's harder to find the actual records. I'd appreciate if the fastest runs in each category for each map were always on top of the list. Also, some of my very own runs are missing! Who did I piss off to be so discriminated against? Take e3m5 for example. It doesn't even list the fastest single-player UV Speed, neither mine nor HJ's pacifist run. What's up with that?

Nomo runs seem to be listed only occasionally, and they're not the actual fastest runs. Hum...

It seems a sporadic collection of demos that fails to offer an competitive speedrunner an accurate list of the current records on each map? Or am I missing something?

Doomed Speed Demos Archive is a site maintained by Andy Olivera willingness, and he updates it every sunday. Don't worry, there is nothing "against you" or anything like that! It is just that Andy uploads Compet-N demos from time to time. If you notice, at the starting page, there is a Compet-N mirror, with basically every demo which he hasn't uploaded to the site yet.

The fastest runs for each category IS on top of the list. All I disagree is that the fastest times disregard whether demo is a Coop demo or not, so sometimes a Coop demo is on top of the list as the fastest. Some demos get some competition, but we lack interest and players in order to have a stronger fight.

[Archy]

Vile said:

I got Dosbox running a bit better, mouse sens feels off but maybe I am just not used to Vanilla Doom. I can't get fullscreen to work properly though because it runs extremely slow. I've followed some config suggestions but nothing has helped yet. The best I could do was lower my windows resolution to 800x600 (the lowest it goes, lol) and play in a window.

How much and what type of RAM do you have and what type of CPU do you have? I've got DOSBox running smoothly on a Single Core computer running Windows xp with just 256 megs of RAM, but I had to do some crazy stuff like end explorer.exe via Task Manager.

It sounds to me that it's a problem with your video card/drivers or monitor.

I wold mess with the "output=" settings. Also, unless this creates a problem, I would set both "fullresolution=" and "windowresolution=" to "original", then I would set "scaler=" to something "2x" or "3x", unless it creates a problem.
Possible values are:
none, normal2x, normal3x, advmame2x, advmame3x, advinterp2x, advinterp3x, hq2x, hq3x, 2xsai, super2xsai, supereagle, tv2x, tv3x, rgb2x, rgb3x, scan2x, scan3x.

Also, this should be true for all computers, as it affects DOSBox internally. Make sure "cycles=max", also, this should only be necessary for demanding games like Quake or Blood or monster filled wads like Hell Revealed map 32, but setting "memsize=64" could stop lag and graphical glitching in some cases.

[kimo_xvirus]

A while ago I tried Map01 Nomo with sr40 only, my best was 5.31, but it wasn't hardworked relative to my run with sr50. That 5.25 of AdamH and Ocelot are so good, there's a chance they can't be beaten in an sr40 only TAS without the wallrun.

BTW dew, 5.20 in PrBoom+ is the same as 5.17 in doom2.exe because it's difficult to straferun and turn from the 1st tic in PrBoom+, if you do it at the wipeout it's from the 2nd tick.
If you want to move from the 1st tick, you have to do it when the screen is black, if you do it too early the mouse will be locked out, you just need to time it correctly, changing the resolution to be the same as the desktop can help. Doing the straferunning from 1st tick is easy enough, but the turn has a very small window of opportunity that it's nearly impossible to do right. You can try it and toy with Doom Demo Browser 2.0b2 to check the tics, it displays the tics in a really nice way.

[Belial]

Altima said:

I regret not a single moment of my time to speedrunning. Sure, I could have done other things, but would it have been as personally rewarding?

I find that hard to believe and even harder to understand. I could name things that are still Doom-related that looking back at them I find to be more of an accomplishment than the end result of all the time I've wasted recording demos, the beta-testing I've done on some wads or my Strife speedrun to name a few.

Now that I've moved on and tried living the life I've wanted to live (semi-successfully), I can see how much time I've lost to this game. Time which I can't recover, which could've and should've been the best years of my youth.

If I take this rant any further it'll sound like some preacher bullshit so I'll leave it at that.

[TimeOfDeath]

Are you talking about having sex with girls and stuff? Ew, gross!

[Vile]

Archy said:

How much and what type of RAM do you have and what type of CPU do you have? I've got DOSBox running smoothly on a Single Core computer running Windows xp with just 256 megs of RAM, but I had to do some crazy stuff like end explorer.exe via Task Manager.

It sounds to me that it's a problem with your video card/drivers or monitor.

Yeah, my setup isn't the most conventional but it should be fast enough. It's a Sony Vaio laptop with an Intel i5 CPU and 4 GB ram.

I'll try some of those suggestions to see if fullscreen works better.