So, it's 1am and this is what is keeping me up.

Boot up pico-8. Bask in it's glory. Hit esc to jump into the editor.

Type something, mess with mouse. Text selection. Go to icon editor, and the mouse is your main tool. So - clearly the pico-8 fantasy hardware supports a mouse.

Why can't my programs read the mouse? Possible answers:

1) The editors are "special" (do not like! seems unfair somehow.)

2) You can, it's just hidden or undocumented (ooh)

3) Because the editors are not written in the language we are using and have special access (probably the real answer, but very unsatisfying. breaks the illusion/metaphor of fantasy hardware.)

Or maybe something else? I noticed that you can poke in values to monkey with screen modes; if there were peeks somewhere that read the mouse x/y and buttons that we have yet to discover, that would be just kinda awesome.

If there are not - would be super cool to see them someday. Even if they were slipped in quietly for the community to accidentally discover via experimentation. Just sayin.

-- Your Friend Biggles

"1) The editors are "special" (do not like! seems unfair somehow.)"

Maybe, but that's how it is - at least the code editor has to have a special treatment to handle the source code. So it is understandable, that it has special treatments otherwise as well. I wouldn't have a problem with mouse and keyboard input in Pico8, but at the end, it tries to be a console, not an eight bit home computer.

By that reasoning (it's a console, not an 8-bit), it shouldn't have editors; the big feature differentiating consoles vs early 8-bit computers was the ability for a user to make new things. Using pico-8 does not remind me of playing my Atari 2600 (frankly, it's too good) - I reminds me of writing games on my Atari 400, may it rest in peace somewhere in my garage, I think.

One of the empowering bits here is that, within the self-imposed rules, we can do anything they can do (they being zep in this case). Clearly the pico-8 console has a mouse (or trackpad or such) - it would be cool to have it available, somehow, for things that would benefit.

-- Biggles, rebel scum

I agree with adding mouse & keyboard support. It would open this platform up to whole new genres of gameplay. We've seen consoles with mouse support before (SNES Mario Paint). And since pico-8 is a modern & fantasy take on the retro console, maybe zep will get around to adding it. Even Microsoft is adding it to their Xbox.

In the meantime, thanks for a great toy!

You actually can use the mouse. You just need to poke(0x5f2d,1). Then, using stat(32), stat(33), and stat(34) will give you the x, y, and click status respectively.