Bumping this because it's the first mention I've had of somebody having the same problem as me. Everything else I've looked up has been about the no$gba black-screen issue.
Some more information:
- This is not an area-specific issue, I've had it occur in multiple places (after restarting the game).
- The black area mentioned in the OP appears to be the edge of the area that had loaded when the issue occurred. If you run back along the path in the other direction you'll find another area of black nothingness that way.
- The game does not seem to freeze while running the other way, but in order to progress you must go back to where the issue occurred, and you will still freeze.
- Going into a building and then exiting again will fix the black zone line, allowing you to adventure further, but will not stop the inevitable freeze.
- After coming out of the building the icons for all your menu options are not displayed, but the words still are. You can run around like this for a little while, but it will still freeze shortly.
- I do not have any cheats on my emulator, so this issue does not appear to be caused by a bugged cheat.
- The "fix" listed in this thread does not work. Your game will not freeze in the exact same place after reloading, allowing you to technically keep playing by saving every few seconds and reloading when it crashes. However, once you reload it will still crash within a minute of moving around, if it even lasts that long.
- The game will only crash while you're moving. Loading a file that's about to freeze and simply standing there allows you to keep the game running indefinitely, but as soon as you start moving again it freezes just as it would've anyway. The number of steps it takes a pre-glitchy file to freeze does not appear to be consistent between loads.
- If you encounter a wild pokemon while this issue is taking place the game will not freeze during the battle. It appears to only happen while walking.
I don't know much about the coding in emulators/roms specifically, but if I had to guess at the cause I'd say the emulator has stopped reading the rom properly. This would make sense given that the loaded area can still be freely roamed, but no new maps are loading. It would also make sense since going into a building and exiting forces it to reload that area, making the black areas go away. I don't know why it freezes.
Please somebody help
ps. Has anyone had this problem with HeartGold or does it appear specific to SoulSilver?