Full Controller Support

This question has probably been asked before but:
Is there any reason we can't have full controller support as a DevKit option? I know stuff like this exists but it feels janky and convoluted. And I know that full controller goes against the spirit of pico-8, but so does mouse and keyboard, so I feel like logically controller would be fine as a DevKit flag. Is there some technical reason this can't be done? Or is it just not a priority in general? Thanks for any answers!

(I'm sure this has been discussed a thousand times, so if there's a thread I should see please point me there)

I don't disagree with the idea of full controller support, but I do think that it makes sense for pico-8 to have the supports it already does. The trend for things like the NES and the commodore-64 was to have a full keyboard and mouse as options, but with the standard being controllers that were very simple. Like, even the SNES followed that.

Full color support? Full resolution support? Full memory support? Full speed support? ;)

But seriously, if you need full controller support on a particular html only project, it's feasible. "just" map a single directinput controller's inputs over several pico-8 controllers in javascript. I think I've seen it around here on the bbs, might need a little digging...

This sounds like a good feature for Picotron.

in my understanding, the development kit mode has keyboard and mouse support because these give you many keys and easy access to any pixel to do stuff in debug mode (custom to your game).

I don’t understand how a controller with many buttons would help development. it gives many buttons that don’t exist in pico8, so would need to be mapped to keys? keyboard is easier. it has analog joysticks? mouse is easier. so in the fantasy of limited gamepad + keyboard in pretend dev mode, I don’t see how a more advanced gamepad fits. this seems like requesting an exception to one of the desired limits of the fantasy console.

picotron has been announced to just use modern gamepads, which I think means 4 arrows, 2 joysticks, 4 action buttons, 4 shoulder buttons.