I returned to Faldon after about 10 years and found I had horrible fps plus the game would slow down to unbearable levels over time.

This was not how I remembered it.

I used 3 different machines:

Dual core i3 2130 @ 3.4GHz + 8GB + 750 Ti 2GB + Windows XP

Quad core i5 750 @ 4.0GHz + 16GB RAM + NVIDIA 680 2GB + Windows 7

Quad core i7 7700k @ 5.0GHz + 16GB RAM + AMD 480 8GB + Windows 10

Out of those three machines only the Windows XP one ran smoothly, didn't slow down and was able to hold hundreds of FPS in all areas.

So it's not likely to be the hardware but Windows.

I will demonstrate with the middle machine.

What really stood out for me was that on Windows 7 and 10 the font was oversized and you couldn't see all of it in the available space. I also found that the more font that piled up in the chatbox the worse the performance became.

I've been unable to replicate the oversized default font since fixing the issue but this is the default I currently have:

Low fps and if I hit Nova ( as an example of action on the screen) the game lags horribly and is unplayable.

The oversized font led me to Cleartype which is a font smoothing program in windows:

By disabling that fps improved a bit but hitting Nova again crippled the game. Note that font is now pixellated due to Cleartype being disabled.

More digging around made me try out changing settings in DirectX, something you cannot do normally.

You need the DirectX control panel: http://microsoft-directx-control-panel.en.lo4d.com/

In this you want to go to the DirectDraw tab and untick Use Hardware Acceleration:

After that, apply all graphics settings in Faldon:

Tadaa... and no matter what action is going on the fps and game smoothness stays great:

Out in the desert on this same machine my fps can go over 1600 which doesn't benefit anything but it shows how freely the game is able to run without the crippling effects of Cleartype and whatever is going wrong between Faldon and DirectDraw:

Hopefully this helps old players and new players who are wondering why this game plays horribly on their new operating systems.