Wild Hearts devs fix the hellish RX 7900 XTX 'disco lights' headache

Wild Hearts weapons - a hunter with a hammer
(Image credit: EA)

Monster battling action game Wild Hearts is known for two major things: a strong combat system and bad PC performance. Now though, the latest patch should see the port running much smoother on PC, and finally give us the opportunity to play without being plagued by the game's Wild Heart's poor PC performance.

Last week, the Omega Force devs acknowledged the PC port runs terribly, promising a fix was inbound. Yesterday, the new patch was released, and an update was posted on the Steam page detailing some of the problems the team has addressed for PC users.

It looks like we'll be seeing less corrupted data from save/load screen issues, and an unlocked frame rate cap for high-end CPUs. That's great if you're packing a 13th Gen Intel monster like the Core i9 13900K

The devs also note the game had issues with the stacking of delayed audio, and explain that the new audio stacking fix should lead to "performance improvements across the board." Audio stacking happens when sound effects try to play over one another, but if they're not being properly mixed in the code they end up echoing and amplifying.

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I can confirm from my days making little indie games at uni that audio stacking can be a horrible drain on performance, and a hellish soundscape, especially when your audio consists almost entirely of pigs squealing (don't ask).

Anyway, the devs say a 5.1/7.1 audio workaround that could be used is no longer necessary on PC.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX users will be pleased to hear they'll no longer have to deal with the fit-inducing 'disco lights' effect they had been experiencing, which was a bit of a mess, honestly.

All this is a triumph for hunters everywhere, and a relief for PC gamers who are frankly getting fed up with one shitty port after another.

Katie Wickens
Hardware Writer

Screw sports, Katie would rather watch Intel, AMD and Nvidia go at it. Having been obsessed with computers and graphics for three long decades, she took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni, and has been rambling about games, tech and science—rather sarcastically—for four years since. She can be found admiring technological advancements, scrambling for scintillating Raspberry Pi projects, preaching cybersecurity awareness, sighing over semiconductors, and gawping at the latest GPU upgrades. Right now she's waiting patiently for her chance to upload her consciousness into the cloud.

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