Log Message:
mame: update to 0.253.

It’s time for MAME 0.253, but before we start talking about all
the exciting updates, there are a couple of things that will affect
people compiling or packaging MAME. Firstly, libc++ 6 is no longer
supported. You can still compile with clang 6, but you’ll need to
use libc++ 7 or later, or GNU libstdc++ 7 or later, for the C++
standard library. Secondly, MAME now requires Lua compiled as C++
to work correctly. This prevents the use of Lua libraries from
Linux distribution package repositories, as they are compiled as
C. (The technical reason for this change is that MAME requires C++
stack frames to be unwound correctly, including destructor calls,
when Lua errors are raised from C++ code. Using Lua compiled as C
will cause resource leaks.)

We’ve updated to Lua 5.4, which comes with an all-new garbage
collector, giving better performance. This should have minimal
impact on people writing scripts and plugins. Two of the biggest
visible changes are that unpack has been replaced with table.unpack
and the deprecated bitlib has been removed. While we’re talking
about Lua, we’d like to draw your attention to the new MAME Goodies
repository, where we’ll be adding additional content for use with
MAME. So far, there are two plugins. One of them is sure to be
useful for fans of Konami’s arcade rhythm games. They also serve
as example code for people looking to learn about some of the things
you can do with MAME’s Lua scripting capabilities.

The long-rumoured microcode-based Motorola 68000 CPU core is finally
here! It’s already delivering results, with a number of previously
out-of-reach Atari ST demos now running. We’ve done some intensive
testing, but there are probably still regressions lurking. Let us
know if one of your favourite 68k-based games flakes out on you.

One of the more interesting systems to be dumped and emulated this
month is Akazukin, a 1983 arcade game where you shoot wolves preying
on a defenceless girl. There’s also a game bearing the rather
generic title Heroes, an early version of Data East’s Mutant Fighter.
We’ve added a few more electronic toys to play with, including Race
Time from Bandai, Punch Your Lights Out from Tiger, and a trio of
backgammon and chess games from Tryom. If you’re in a more serious
mood, the Brother LW-30 and LW-840ic dedicated word processors are
now supported. The Sony NWS-3410 UNIX workstation is now working
(albeit without its frame buffer, so you’ll need to use a serial
terminal), as is the ironically named Vector 4 S-100 bus computer
(Vector Graphic never sold a system with vector graphics capabilities).

Building on the work in last month’s release, Hyper Neo Geo 64
games are looking better than ever. Numerous texturing and tilemap
issues have been resolved. Taito F3 video emulation has had several
effects fixed, with Land Maker in particular looking noticeably
better. Switching from video to sound, the KC 85 computer family
now has working audio output, some issues with looping and retriggered
samples on the Apple IIgs have been fixed, and fixes for PC Engine
CD audio playback issues have made some games go from crashing to
playable. More subtly, correcting audio chip clock frequencies has
fixed the pitch of sounds for several systems, including Snow Bros.
2 and Noboranka.