Software update: Mame 0.137

On Thursday, version 0.137 of Mame was released, the first release of 2010. Mame, which stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, is a program that makes it possible to play a large number of classic arcade games. More information about this can be found in this wiki are being found. Mame is published under the bsd license and is available for download in various versions. The comprehensive list of changes is in this text file to find back; the main ones can be found below:

Release 0.137

IMPORTANT NOTE: As of this release of MAME, several important things about the system have changed. Please read the following items before attempting to compile this new version.

• A new tool chain for Windows, based off of gcc 4.4.3 prerelease, is now REQUIRED. Go to http://mamedev.org/tools to get the new tools. The code included with 0.137 WILL NOT BUILD with the old tools. The new tool chain has support for building 64-bit MAME builds with gcc, as well as built-in DirectX headers, and C++ support, which was missing from the old tools.
• Non-Unicode builds of Windows MAME are no longer supported. The options to turn this off in the makefile have been removed, and future changes are likely to solidify this requirement. If you are still (God forbid) running on Win9x, you will need the unicows.dll library to run MAME. Download unicows from Microsoft.
• All code in MAME is now compiled as C++, plus there have been a few small changes that take advantage of the C++ language. For the most part, there is no effect on how drivers are written, except for some nicer accessors to devices and address spaces. Future improvements to take advantage of the C++ syntax will evolve slowly, and will be done internally. We are not interested in outside attempts to do this work for now.
• The SDL OSD for MAME is now shipped as part of the main source package. SDL builds for Windows are now regularly built as part of the validation sequence for a new release. Thanks to R. Belmont, couriersud, and Olivier Galibert for their work on the SDL port over the years.