How to play Pokemon ORAS on PC using the Baidu build of Citra most of the time
Info
It's a heavily censored secret, but you can certainly play ORAS on the chinese Citra builds right now! (XY you can't) (you need an account to see links)
It crashes a bit but it's certainly playable if you have a decent CPU. I beat Sapphire and the entire game plus Delta episode on my laptop. The quality of your FPS depends almost entirely on your CPU not your GPU as there is no JIT!
Main bugs
Magma/Aqua Quintuplet crash - Bypass this one by disabling HW renderer until you see the aqua/magma logo and then re-enable it
Random crash - every now and then the game will randomly freeze. If you're in overworld, just relax and let it pass. If it occurs during battle, you'll have to restart the emulator so save often.
Materials
1. Baidu build of Citra. New ones will be available at (you need an account to see links). At the time of this post, the latest is the July the 9th edition: (you need an account to see links) (Please use jdownloader to download it)
2. Pokemon Alpha Sapphire. This one will blackscreen in Petalburg and Rustboro, however the hackrom (you need an account to see links) works fine so I recommend you get both. I played SS2.0 up until Mauville and switched to Alpha Sapphire
3. You may need a CIA to .3ds converter if your ROM (as the Star Sapphire ROM may be) is in CIA format because Citra only plays .3ds games. Here is a copy of the one that I use. (you need an account to see links) This is a video explaining in great detail (you need an account to see links).
4. PkHex! For the cheaters among us but you'll need a copy to get by (you need an account to see links)
To use Citra
1. Drag the .3ds ROM onto one of the Citra executables. AVX is in my opinion fastest but it depends on your core architecture. AVX>SSE4.1>SSE3
2. Do NOT play as a girl as only male playthroughs are known to complete the game (there are gender associated crashes)
To cheat with PkHex
1. You can rename it to PkHax to give stuff illegitimate moves/abilities
2. Your save file is in \user\sdmc\Nintendo 3DS\00000000000000000000000000000000\0000000000000 0000000000000000000\title\00040000\0011c400\data\0 0000001
or
3DS\00000000000000000000000000000000\0000000000000 0000000000000000000\title\00040000\0011c500\data\0 0000001
It's the file called 'main'.
How to boost the FPS marginally
- Plugin your laptop/computer and set the processor state to maximum and ensure the CPU isn't being throttled by programs like Intel's Thermal Framework
- Ensure that you are boosting using your GPU if it exists (you need an account to see links). Detailed config: (you need an account to see links)
- Close other windows that you aren't using