Log message:
* recursive bump for libxkbcommon 1.7.0

Marc Baudoin reported problems with using old binary packages
with the new libkxbcommon, so force everything to 1.7.0

Log message:
mame: update to 0.264.

MAME 0.264 is ready right on time! Before we get to emulation
improvements, there are some changes to the debugger that may affect
you. The debugger’s printf and logerror commands now support more
formatting conversions and options, including NUL-terminated strings
from emulated memory, hexadecimal numbers with lowercase digits,
and left-aligned fields. This may change the behaviour of some
debugger scripts. In other general changes, MAME now supports saving
compact cassette images in compressed FLAC format, so you can save
some disk space.

Thanks to new contributor Enzo Lombardi, Dribbling now has emulated
sound! This classic twin-stick top-down football game was once a
common sight in Italy’s numerous arcades. Sound effects make for
a much more authentic experience. Robin Sergeant, another relative
newcomer to MAME development, has been putting in a lot of work to
improve the state of the Research Machines RM-380Z family, and it’s
really coming together. This release adds sound, graphics, 8" disk
drives, and more.

The very rare arcade game Vampire from Entertainment Enterprises
has finally been dumped and emulated. A rare sight in ’80s arcades,
it wasn’t known for being a great game. In a way, this makes it
more interesting, as we’re more often reminded of successful games
and more likely to forget the failures.

If you’re feeling adventurous, you can use the newly emulated Visual
Technology XDS-19P as a graphical terminal for a modern Linux system
running X11 applications. It requires setting up BootP and TFTP
servers, as well as configuring the host system so it can connect,
so be prepared for a challenge if you decide to try it out.

Of course, there’s much more, including working controls for Tomy
Plarail and Tomica TV games, fixes for audio CD playback, and dumps
of the few remaining EC series Japanese e-kara cartridges.

Log message:
mame: update to 0.263.

Are you all ready for MAME 0.263? This release has some big changes
that are going to affect everyone: several default UI control
assignments have changed, including pause and save/load state. The
changes will hopefully make life easier for people emulating
computers. After updating, please check the User Interface input
assignments and make any changes necessary for your setup.

We’ve fixed some long-standing bugs this month. Issues affecting
large hard disk images (tens of gigabytes) have been fixed, and
chdman will now report more invalid combinations of options rather
than just producing invalid output files. Crashes or hangs when
emulating systems that use discrete sound circuitry simulation on
multi-core ARM systems should be fixed, as well as occasional bad
sound output from the discrete circuitry simulation.

Thanks to recent work reverse-engineering the K052591 chip, this
release features improved protection simulation for Hexion, S.P.Y.
and Thunder Cross. Newly supported systems include a few computers
from the former Yugoslavia, two more Tiger LCD games, and several
more chess computers. The ROMs for the unreleased Deluxe Color
Computer have been dumped recently, allowing emulation to be
completed, and there’s a big update for the Apple II software lists
this month.

Log message:
mame: Assumes presence of SSSE3 on x86-64

Log message:
mame: update to 0.262.

After two long months, we’re back with MAME 0.262! Of course, it’s
full of exciting work on multiple fronts. In core media support,
MAME now supports FLAC compression for compact cassette images,
and Zstandard compression in zip archives and CHD disk images. For
maximum compatibility, chdman won’t use Zstandard compression by
default, so you’ll need to enable it if you want to use it when
creating or converting disk images. For your convenience, unidasm
now allows you to specify offsets in hexadecimal or octal.

Three LaserDisc games designed by Rick Dyer are now working: the
Japanese version of Time Traveler, the console-to-arcade conversion
Thayer’s Quest, and Don Bluth’s Dragon’s Lair. It’s very exciting
to see multiple LaserDisc captures combined to eliminate all dropouts
from disc degradation and pressing faults for Dragon’s Lair and
Thayer’s Quest.

Following up on work in the previous release, MAME now supports
Sega’s TV Ocha-Ken system, based on the same technology as the
Advanced Pico BEENA. It’s a far simpler system designed for young
children, using barcode cards to trigger mini-games. Also from
Sega, initial support for the AI computer has been added. No, this
isn’t related to the current artificial intelligence craze; it’s
a rather obscure system from 1986 featuring a pen tablet and using
cartridge and compact cassette media.

Two more Casio Phase Distortion synthesisers have been added: the
CZ-230S keyboard and the rare SZ-1 sequencer. The CZ-2230S lacked
sound editing features but added a programmable drum machine (using
PCM samples) and sequencer. Also in synthesiser emulation, MAME’s
Wave Blaster host driver now supports multiple synthesiser modules
from Casio, Samsung, and Yamaha. In other musical news, the original
version of the very obscure Shamisen Brothers rhythm game from
Kato’s has now been fully dumped and emulated.

The microcontroller program for Taito’s KiKi KaiKai was recently
extracted. This contains a substantial amount of game logic, allowing
the simulation code previously used by MAME to be retired and giving
more confidence that the emulation is accurate. Improvements to
our Fujitsu MB8841 emulation have fixed persistent issues in Arabian
from Sun Electronics. HT1130 microcontrollers are now supported,
allowing cheap hand-held “brick games” to be emulated, albeit
without sound for now.

This is a big release for chess computer emulation. There are lots
of newly supported chess computers from the brands you love, like
Hegener + Glaser, Novag, and Saitek, as well as more versions of
systems that were already supported. There were also a couple of
backgammon computers added, from Saitek and Tryom.

There’s inevitably far more than we have time to talk about here,
including an Arabic version of the Mattel Aquarius, an 8" floppy
drive controller for the Apple II family, numerous Aristocrat
Leisure gambling systems promoted to working, some big software
list updates, and lots of code modernised.

Log message:
*: Recursive revbump from audio/pulseaudio-17.0

Log message:
mame: update to 0.261.

MAME 0.261 will be the final MAME release of 2023, and it’s a real
ripper! We’re ending the year with a bang! Over a hundred pull
requests were merged this month, including several from first-time
contributors as well as many familiar names. Following up on the
work last month, two more Casio Phase Distortion synthesisers have
been added: the high-end CZ-1 keyboard and the unreleased MZ-1
module. The Yamaha MU50 XG tone generator module is also working
a lot better in this release.

Two home consoles with drawing features are now working: LJN’s
VideoArt from 1987 and Sega’s Advanced Pico BEENA from 2005. Although
they were both positioned as intellectually stimulating consoles
for children and both had drawing features, they couldn’t be more
different. The VideoArt was universally derided for its poor controls
and lack of entertainment value, drawing negative comparisons to
the popular Etch-a-Sketch toy. On the other hand, the BEENA was a
high-quality device using media combining a ROM cartridge with a
picture book, and featured dual pen digitisers. Its ARM CPU is
fairly demanding to emulate in MAME, so you’ll need a fast PC to
run it at full speed. We’re aware that the current scans of the
picture books are not perfect, but it’s still quite usable apart
from some peripherals that aren’t emulated yet.

On a completely different note, some of the Taito gambling and
medal games have started to come to life. The purpose of the games
is to separate you from your money, and there isn’t much gameplay
value, but they’re still interesting to see. Some of them feature
characters from popular Taito franchises. Speaking of gambling
games, a couple of Chinese-language mahjong gambling games from
BMC have been dumped.

Systems with AVR8 CPUs now run up to 50% faster, including the
Uzebox console, Linus Åkesson demos, and the homebrew Sega Master
System paddle controller. A means of dumping the microcontrollers
Jaleco used for protection in some Mega System 1 games has been
discovered recently, allowing the protection simulation code to be
retired for 64th St. - A Detective Story and Big Striker. Our
understanding of the gate array protection used for some other
Jaleco games has also improved. The internal Super A'Can now has
its main CPU’s internal ROM hooked up properly, improving the
accuracy of its boot process.

Of course, there’s far more in this release than we have time to
talk about here, including newly dumped Korean versions of arcade
games, bootlegs from Spain, support for PDS cards on the Mac
Quadra/LC 630 family, more Heathkit Terminal Logic Board variants,
and lots of new software list items.

Log message:
*: revebump for new brotli option for freetype2

Addresses PR 57693

Log message:
*: recursive bump for icu 74.1

Log message:
mame: update to 0.260.

MAME 0.260

Some long-anticipated updates landed in October, making MAME 0.260
a very exciting release! Firstly, there are some general updates
to MAME itself. After a few false starts, MAME now supports bgfx
video output with Wayland on Linux. As requested by users, you can
finally use delta CHD files for clone systems and software items.
This allows for major disk space savings in some cases when you
have multiple versions of a system or software item. There’s also
an updated version of PortAudio included.

Two very different systems from Casio have been promoted to working
this month. The first is the CZ-101 compact keyboard synthesiser.
It used Phase Distortion Synthesis, which was Casio’s patent-avoiding
answer to Yamaha’s DX series. To help you load patches, MAME can
now feed SysEx files to emulated MIDI input ports. The other is
the Loopy, a game console released exclusively in Japan and marketed
primarily to girls. While sound output, the sticker printer, and
the frame grabber accessory are not emulated (yet), you can try
out the system’s entire library of eleven software titles.

Several Korean arcade games were added this month, including a
Solitaire card game from F2 System that uses a dedicated control
panel and features some rather disturbing pre-rendered 3D animations.
A few Merit games were added as well. Other improvements include
more emulated NuBus and PDS cards for Macs, Cumana DFS disk image
support for the Acorn Electron, and support for an MSX Flash
cartridge.

MAME 0.259

It looks like MAME 0.259 just squeaked in before the end of September!
As usual, it’s packed with exciting stuff. One thing we know some
of you have been patiently waiting for is emulation of Namco System
12 games using the CDXA board and CD-ROM storage: Truck Kyosokyoku
and the interesting but unsuccessful Um Jammer Lammy NOW! The work
to support these games also puts us in a better position to support
systems that use SH-2 CPUs with different combinations of onboard
peripherals. Also added this month are two Konami LCD games, Bandai’s
two-player tabletop U-Boat game, and three arcade games on dgPix
hardware.

On a completely different front, VME-based systems in MAME have
had a major overhaul. The system of backplanes and cards is more
faithfully reproduced. Speaking of cards, another ZXBUS storage
interface card has been emulated for enhanced ZX Spectrum derivatives
with a suitable slot. In other card-related news, work on PC video
cards is still progressing, with the added benefit of fixing
MegaTouch XL 6000 graphics this month. While we’re talking about
graphics, the Sharp X68000 had a few glitches fixed, too.

Initial support for built-in Ethernet has been implemented for
several Macintosh Quadra systems, and some bugs in the onboard
video emulation for MC68040-based Macs were fixed. Also in Apple
news, the Apple III now runs at a more realistic speed, and there’s
been a little progress on the first-generation PowerMac family.

MAME now has support for hard-sectored floppy formats, which were
a thing back in the days of big 8" drives, and a few issues with
how TD0 format disk images are handled were fixed. Also related to
floppy disks, the poorly-received TIB Disc Drive DD-001 that attached
to the Commodore 64’s cartridge port is now emulated. Finally,
players curious about CPS-2 games can now twiddle the debugging
DIP switches that were apparently present on development systems.