answered Edited ROM of Alpha Sapphire freezes up when running the game through HANS

[LusterSoldier]

By using 3DS homebrew, I went and dumped the ROM of Alpha Sapphire and then used pk3DS to edit the RomFS to create a randomizer. After rebuilding the RomFS, the new file was moved into the appropriate folder on my SD card. Then I went and booted up Alpha Sapphire through HANS to play the game using the edited RomFS. However, the game will freeze up very early in the process of starting a new game. I took this screenshot to give you a rough idea of when the game will freeze up:

This screenshot is right after choosing your trainer name. The game will ultimately freeze up shortly after that screenshot was taken when the screen goes completely white.

Any possible guess as to why the game is freezing up when playing it through HANS with an edited RomFS?

[evandixon]

Try using Hans to redirect an unedited romfs and code.bin.

It's possible that the randomization went wrong, or that there's a problem with your SD. If this works, then that rules out the SD and makes some of the randomizations suspect.

[Guest]

I -believe- that freeze is caused by the starter Pokémon being randomized, is it not? Leave the starters untouched and it should work fine.

[LusterSoldier]

Try using Hans to redirect an unedited romfs and code.bin.

This worked without any problems. The game did not freeze up on me.

The next step was attempting to apply only small edits to the RomFS instead of a large number of edits. I went and randomized all of the wild Pokemon encounters, rebuilt the RomFS, and then moved the new file back to my SD card. This simple randomization did not freeze up my game and the randomized wild encounters worked as intended. So I have the randomizer up and running properly. Now it comes down to tracking down the source of the game freezes from the other stuff I randomized.

I -believe- that freeze is caused by the starter Pokémon being randomized, is it not? Leave the starters untouched and it should work fine.

I actually did randomize the starter Pokemon. I noticed the area for randomizing starter Pokemon is located under the section for CRO Editing Tools in pk3DS. When I tried randomizing the starters and rebuilt the RomFS, there was an option to rebuild the CRO. Although I rebuilt the RomFS, I did not rebuild the CRO as well (maybe this is the source of the game freezes).

[Kaphotics]

When clicking on the Starters button...

[LusterSoldier]

I tried to apply an edit to the ROM where the only change was randomizing the starters and this causes the game to freeze up, so that confirms what was already mentioned above. If the CRO editing tools can't be used without having the game freeze up, then these tools should be disabled in pk3DS (at least until it's possible to avoid a game freeze from having an edited CRO).

The randomizer which I originally attempted was recreated again with all of the edits I used in my first try (which freezed my game), but without the starters being randomized. This worked just fine without causing any problems, so I now have a working randomizer.