[GEC] Master Edition PSX Doom for the PlayStation. Beta 4 Released [11/16/2022]

[CoTeCiO]

3 minutes ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

Wait? the FORMER SARGENT? My map has no sargents! XD

 

Also it turns out I did have the latest build, I just didn't check the WIP maps folder like a dunce :S

Then you're doing something wrong with the map file. It seems like the MAPSPR01 file was indeed replaced, but the game is still loading the original MAP01 that does have sergeants. Try with build.bat.

[Dark Pulse]

14 minutes ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

Wait? the FORMER SARGENT? My map has no sargents! XD

 

Also it turns out I did have the latest build, I just didn't check the WIP maps folder like a dunce :S

 

To quote Jon-Tron:

 

OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD :D

 

 

Also I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume the glitchy skybox is because I have too many textures loaded into the map.

It might be that the skybox is fixed height. Try lowering the ceilings a little bit in that area, see if that smooshes it down or cures it. The PS1 Doom engine does pretty bad with heights in some ways.

[Gez]

On lundi 25 juin 2018 at 11:26 PM, Dragonsbrethren said:

"Fun" fact: Barons of Hell take up slightly more room than Hell Knights. It's enough to push Power Control over the limit if I use Barons instead of Knights. This happens at 772KB, but Well of Souls actually exceeds 800KB, proving that the size of the map WAD/ROM itself also comes into play for sprite limits. Presumably you could get more monster variety by getting rid of map geometry. Might be a worthwhile tradeoff in some cases.

That's because the baron has more sprites than the knight.

 

The baron and knight have a four-step walk animation (ABCD). The latter two steps are mirrored versions of the first two: on A, the monster has its right leg in front, on B it moves the left leg forwards, on C the left leg is on front (mirror of A) and on D it moves its right leg forward (mirror of B).

 

The baron has four full sets for these. You have BOSSA1, BOSSA2A8, BOSSA3A7, BOSSA4A6, and BOSSA5, then same deal for BOSSB*, BOSSC*, and BOSSD*. The knight has only two full sets, taking advantage of mirroring: BOS2A1C1, BOS2A2C8, BOS2A3C7, BOS2A4C6, BOS2A5C5, BOS2A6C4, BOS2A7C3, and BOS2A8C2, then same deal for BOS2B?D?.

 

The result is that for the walk cycle, the baron has four times five sprites (20 total), which the knight only has two times eight sprites (16 total). Advantage to the knight, with four less sprites than the baron! When you add the attack, pain, and death animations, you arrive at a grand total of 55 sprites for the knight and 59 for the baron, since only the walk cycle differ between both.

[Dark Pulse]

3 minutes ago, Gez said:

That's because the baron has more sprites than the knight.

 

The baron and knight have a four-step walk animation (ABCD). The latter two steps are mirrored versions of the first two: on A, the monster has its right leg in front, on B it moves the left leg forwards, on C the left leg is on front (mirror of A) and on D it moves its right leg forward (mirror of B).

 

The baron has four full sets for these. You have BOSSA1, BOSSA2A8, BOSSA3A7, BOSSA4A6, and BOSSA5, then same deal for BOSSB*, BOSSC*, and BOSSD*. The knight has only two full sets, taking advantage of mirroring: BOS2A1C1, BOS2A2C8, BOS2A3C7, BOS2A4C6, BOS2A5C5, BOS2A6C4, BOS2A7C3, and BOS2A8C2, then same deal for BOS2B?D?.

 

The result is that for the walk cycle, the baron has four times five sprites (20 total), which the knight only has two times eight sprites (16 total). Advantage to the knight, with four less sprites than the baron! When you add the attack, pain, and death animations, you arrive at a grand total of 55 sprites for the knight and 59 for the baron, since only the walk cycle differ between both.

So the bigger question, considering that the two are literally palette swaps, is... why the hell did they do it like that?

 

If it worked fine for one, it will clearly work fine for the other, so...?

[Marcaek]

Any excuse to use less barons is a good one.....

[Gez]

I don't know, I wasn't there.

 

But remember that the knights were added for Doom II, while the barons were one of the very first monster to be made. All I can guess is that they redid all the knight sprites based on the Deluxe Paint sheets they had rather than by editing the baron sprites individually, so they redid the whole slicing and importing from scratch, and they had a better approach the second time, perhaps thanks to having more experience. But they didn't redo the baron sprites in the same way because why bother?

[Dark Pulse]

3 minutes ago, Marcaek said:

Any excuse to use less barons is a good one.....

This sounds like "Add more Barons to my level."

[Marcaek]

Hey, if you want to make it worse, more power to you!

[Dark Pulse]

Well, my mission is to make these levels worse in the right sort of way, so hey. :)

 

Speaking of which, @Erick194 or @Gerardo194, put me down for Doom E3M8: Dis, as well as TNT Evilution MAP05: Hanger.

 

I'm also considering Master Levels: TEETH.WAD but that might be a bit tricky to do justice with PS1 Doom's engine, so I'm not sure if I want to "claim" that yet. (Maybe a soft-claim? I won't be trying it until I do those other two, at a minimum.)

[Erick194]

8 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Lastly, can I get a reply from you or @Erick194 as to if it's possible to assign a song to your map (even if it's "not now, but eventually")? Definitely don't want Bells of Agony on Open Season, but ideally I wanted to run through a few candidates before I decided on a final one (even though I've already got a frontrunner in mind).

If you can change or assign the music number, for the level, but this version of PSXDOOM.EXE, it is subject to a single level, to itself as a single music, but you can think what music you want for your level and you will tell me then ;)

 

With respect to adding new music, if possible, but it is not possible, since the spaces for music are already defined in the PSXDOOM.EXE.

[Dark Pulse]

2 minutes ago, Erick194 said:

If you can change or assign the music number, for the level, but this version of PSXDOOM.EXE, it is subject to a single level, to itself as a single music, but you can think what music you want for your level and you will tell me then ;)

 

With respect to adding new music, if possible, but it is not possible, since the spaces for music are already defined in the PSXDOOM.EXE.

I obviously have no problem with that. Would it be possible for me to swap around some files to do that myself? (Specifically, by taking the music I want, and replacing either the MUSLEV1.LCD or MUSLEV23.LCD with the one I'm seeking to test before building the ISO? I have the original PS1 Doom games, so it's trivial for me to get them off the disc.)

 

It's trivial for me to say "I want this one," but that's also why I want to test them WITH the map, so I can feel if they flow right with the map.

[Erick194]

You will excuse me, friend, but it is not possible yet.

[Dark Pulse]

I see. That's disappointing, but hopefully in the future it can be supported.

[Dragonsbrethren]

I think I'm getting the hang of this, but the levels I picked were pretty easy. I'm gonna try a real challenge: Downtown.

 

Edit:

Don't get too excited, I just wanted to make sure the map ran after getting texture, flat, and monster usage reigned in. If I turn to the left or right, it bombs out with a point overflow pretty quickly, but I was able to walk straight ahead and the framerate is surprisingly high for no optimizations being made yet.

 

I didn't consult the Lost Levels conversion at all yet--I remember it cutting the height of this map drastically, making it feel less like a city and even more like a bunch of blocky sectors than it already does. I can probably work around the heights easily enough if I can get rid of those point overflow errors, but working around heights means I have to add even more sectors... Well, hey, I wanted a challenge!

Edited June 27, 2018 by Dragonsbrethren

[DynamiteKaitorn]

He's an update to Go2It:

 

So far I have a rendering issue here that I need to clean up before I start adding "things" to the map.

 

The starting room looks good but the "LeftZClip: Point Overflow" error keeps cropping up. (I captured FrontZ not LeftZ here) I have noticed something odd though so I might know where the error is in the starting room.

I kinda like this red tunnel. Kinda looks spooooky. :3

 

Also I managed to completely break my map and almost instantly have a "RightZClip: Point Overflow" error practically as soon as you even try to look at it:

 

I'll keep you lads and lasses updated as a roll on out with crashes! :D

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(I really need to get used to breaking games ._.)

 

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Does it matter if I don't place the "things" on my map EXACTLY where they were on the PC version? (Obviously I don't want to move them all over the map, that would be silly) I mean if a room had like 3 boxes of shells and 2 cell charge packs, do I neex to mimic the exact locations in the room like the PC version or can I move them a little?

[Dragonsbrethren]

I’ve only been moving things if they have obvious clipping or if I need to insert new ones.

[Dark Pulse]

2 hours ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

He's an update to Go2It:

 

So far I have a rendering issue here that I need to clean up before I start adding "things" to the map.

 

The starting room looks good but the "LeftZClip: Point Overflow" error keeps cropping up. (I captured FrontZ not LeftZ here) I have noticed something odd though so I might know where the error is in the starting room.

I kinda like this red tunnel. Kinda looks spooooky. :3

 

Also I managed to completely break my map and almost instantly have a "RightZClip: Point Overflow" error practically as soon as you even try to look at it:

 

I'll keep you lads and lasses updated as a roll on out with crashes! :D

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(I really need to get used to breaking games ._.)

 

Anything with "Point Overflow" generally means that the geometry in view is too complex to render. It's hitting some sort of static limit on the engine (my guess is on vertices) and so bombing out. Consider reducing the number of pillars over there - try halving them, and see if that works; if not, reduce them again and maybe make them a bit bigger to compensate for the emptier space, for example. I actually had this problem in Open Season with the ledge under the rocket launcher room for awhile, but then other stuff I did made it go away, so I reinserted what I'd deleted.

 

Other things to check for is stuff like sidedefs that share a texture as adjacent lines but have no real other reason to be "split" - you can delete the vertex and merge them into a single, longer linedef. I think this is ultimately what fixed Open Season.

 

We really have no way of knowing exactly where the problem is, and it theoretically could be anywhere on the map (that area wasn't the only area where I eliminated extraneous vertices), but basically if you do that, you might be able to make it go away.

 

And if not, well, time to start altering the area much more dramatically.

 

1 hour ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

Does it matter if I don't place the "things" on my map EXACTLY where they were on the PC version? (Obviously I don't want to move them all over the map, that would be silly) I mean if a room had like 3 boxes of shells and 2 cell charge packs, do I neex to mimic the exact locations in the room like the PC version or can I move them a little?

I generally try to keep Thing placement where it was in the PC original. However, sometimes I'll alter a room for some reason or another (either I tweaked the room, or added/removed things, or thought the original placement was just odd) and in that case, I'll adjust where the Things are. This is especially true if I have to remove monsters, or come across minor issues like the Grab Distance seemingly being slightly lower compared to the PC version of Doom.

 

In short, basically use a light touch. Moving around Things may be unavoidable in the end, especially in your case (as there's almost no way you'll fit the original's monsters in that 800k file limit), and so you'll need to compensate to some degree. But there should be at least a few surprises and alterations, kind of like the leap from PC Doom to PS1 Doom - don't you get surprised when that chaingunner shows up in the first map on Ultra-Violence?

[DynamiteKaitorn]

I'm mostly working on the difficulty of the map now... and let's just say despite having to DRASTICALLY reduce the amount of enemies and the amount of variety of enemies, it's still quite hard! XD

[Dark Pulse]

Good, it's meant to be a hard map. :)

 

My general guideline regarding enemies is as follows:

1. How often are they used on the map? If it's a low amount of uses, they might be worth replacing. Especially true if they're relatively big monsters like the Mancubus, Revenant, and so on. Any class of monster you remove entirely from the map results in a massive drop of the MAPSPR01.IMG file; I lost hundreds of KB off it when chopping lesser-used monsters from mine.
2. Could you marshal up alternate opposition from lower-tier monsters? For example, if your monster closet has five Lost Souls in it, and those are the only Lost Souls in the map, that's 500 HP (100 HP x 5 monsters) for the encounter, so maybe put a Hell Knight (also 500 HP) in its place if your map has the Hell Knight loaded (as then the sprites are already loaded and I *THINK* it just places a new instance). This will net you a savings on your loaded sprites, and while Lost Souls may only give you a couple dozen kilobytes, big monsters can easily give you several hundred back - key for squeezing into that 800k limit.
3. Don't forget that you can use the Nightmare flags on ANY monster. Set BlendMask1 + BlendMask3 in the Thing's bits, and you automatically make an inverted version of the monster with double the hit points. A Nightmare Spectre - having 300 HP each from the Nightmare Flags compared to the normal Demon's 150 - gives the exact bullet-soaking power of a Revenant, for example. Consult the Doom Wiki for monster HP values.
4. Key thing to remember is whether your monster choice is appropriate - if it was a Revenant on a ledge with nowhere to run, for example, Nightmare Spectres would suck; you'd want to consider five regular Imps or three Nightmare Imps instead, but if the encounter is much harder due to the higher amount of projectiles, "eat the loss" and put up relatively equivalent opposition - in this case, a Cacodemon's 400 HP makes it close (but if it can fly past the ledge, it may be able to do stuff the Revenant could not, so trap it with line flags if you need to). You may not be able to get things exact (Archies have 700 HP for example, which is tricky to replace), but in general, try to get close and try to make it in a way that follows the approximate HP difficulty of that particular enemy encounter.

Edited June 27, 2018 by Dark Pulse

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Nightmare enemies are now added >:D

[Dragonsbrethren]

Hmm, I think PSX Doom might have issues with smaller grid sizes. I've been inserting thin 1 unit sectors around buildings to allow for greater heights without texture stretching, and I ran out of memory after doing two buildings. I found it highly unlikely that the unaltered map is that close to not being able to run, so I altered those sectors to be on an 8x8 grid instead and I don't get the error. I'm going to experiment and see if I can use a size a little less jarring than 8x8, or if I have to drop the sky height to something more manageable like 320.

[Job]

I've been a fly on the wall during the course of this project thread so far. Frankly, this is absolutely fascinating. I'm also very impressed with the tenacity and ingenuity of the participants. You are doing a very good thing, very well. This is getting my Cacoward nomination, no questions asked. 

[riderr3]

Some progress is happening on Spirit World.

Screenshots:

Some textures have changed but it have decent look.


The rock pillar was added specially, because it's noticeably increases fps and merges distinctly into the environment.


Here I can raise ceiling even to 512 units, but it will have few more slowdown, so it's lowered to 384 and have a decent look. Anyway nigher than Lost Levels version (256).
Also the BFALL and rock textures here will not stretch, because I've added dummy sector behind main sector, this dummy sector have zero height and his floor and ceiling is located somewhere about at the middle of main sector height. PSX Doom developers seems not used this trick.


Some more findings:

-in contrast to the PC version, some items can't be collected in certain places, like rocket box at unmodified Doom2: MAP28 because of distance in rock crevice. Or another rocket box at Plutonia: MAP09 because of nearby medikit (south imp rooms). Also have to mention red key pedestal on TNT: MAP10 - I've a bit lowered and narrowed it especially. So make sure place/move items at a particular distance, or they cannot be grabbed
-barons and hell knights can fight each other. Maybe even some map will include them especially for to see how they will infighting
-voodoo dolls are not appeared in-game. Player starts where the latest start point is added.
-if the translucent midtextures have scrolling parameter, the back side will not scroll
-getting the two same keys of one color (skull and card) caused glitch in statusbar

Also info on textures and flats:
-final doom has superior texture set not just of quantity, but also as example it have SUPPORT3 texture and other 16-unit wide useful textures which can save VRAM
-GLOW01 flat is not animating probably because the developers forgot to make it animated. In final doom it's fixed
-glitchy REDROK01 texture, there are transparent pixels and it leads to viewing through walls. In final doom it's also fixed
-STEP6 texture is complete waste of vram, just look at it and you will understand. It would be better if they put multiple steps in that one texture
-texture ENERGY01 and flat ENERG01 is exact replacement for FIREBLU, but that textures are remain unused
-final doom does not have their original skyboxes because they are too long and will eats many memory
 

Edited June 28, 2018 by riderr3

[Dark Pulse]

So a little bit of a reference guide to answer the question "How much stuff can I put in my map?"...

 

To try to test out just how much space gets consumed on MAPSPR01.IMG, I made a dummy testing map. At its core, it contains P1/P2 Starts (remember, P3/P4 aren't needed for PS1 Doom) and 4 Deathmatch spawns, just to make sure that it's more or less compatible. The room is 1024 square, and the chunk in the middle is lowered 128 units so that most stuff can't get out, with monster blocking lines so they don't get out. We want good, (relatively) still monsters here. I used PS1 Final Doom for this test, but the original PS1 Doom seems to have the same limits.

 

 

Even this basic map, when built, generates a 174KB (179,132 Bytes) MAPSPR01.IMG. Presumably this is the game loading Doomguy's sprites; as we'll find out shortly, this actually makes Doomguy the fourth-most expensive set of sprites to load. (Can I get an answer from @Erick194 or @Gerardo194 as to what a barebones MAPSPR01.IMG would contain?)

 

Next, I tested how well the game responded to adding one monster of each type, then rebuilding the ISO. Theoretically, this should give us a per-unit cost of adding a monster to the map. I then took the built version with the monster, and subtracted the version with nothing but starts added to the map from that. The remainder means that one monster of each type takes approximately this much space in the MAPSPR01.IMG file:

• Zombieman - 54KB (234,212 Bytes - 179,132 Bytes = 55,080 Bytes)
• Shotgun Guy - 49KB (229,432 Bytes - 179,132 Bytes = 50,300 Bytes)
• Heavy Weapon Dude - 83KB (264,536 Bytes - 179,132 Bytes = 85,404 Bytes)
• Imp - 52KB (232,772 Bytes - 179,132 Bytes = 53,640 Bytes)
• Demon - 88KB (269,000 Bytes - 179,132 Bytes = 89,868 Bytes)
• Lost Soul - 35KB (214,968 Bytes - 179,132 Bytes = 35,836 Bytes)
• Cacodemon - 104KB (285,516 Bytes - 179,132 Bytes = 106,384 Bytes)
• Hell Knight - 100KB (281,956 Bytes - 179,132 Bytes = 102,824 Bytes)
• Baron of Hell - 114KB (295,360 Bytes - 179,132 Bytes = 116,228 Bytes)
• Arachnotron - 128KB (310,512 Bytes - 179,132 Bytes = 131,380 Bytes)
• Pain Elemental - 142KB (324,276 Bytes - 179,132 Bytes = 145,144 Bytes)
• Revenant - 149KB (331,492 Bytes - 179,132 Bytes = 152,360 Bytes)
• Mancubus - 227KB (411,536 Bytes - 179,132 Bytes = 232,404 Bytes)
• Spider Mastermind - 511KB (702,396 Bytes - 179,132 Bytes = 523,264 Bytes)
• Cyberdemon - 314KB (500,520 Bytes - 179,132 Bytes = 321,388 Bytes)
• Remember, Nightmare/translucent/additive monsters are NOT separate types - they are flags on the Thing, so they should take up no extra memory compared to their normal version.
• If you add a Pain Elemental, the Lost Soul sprites are also added to the map's sprites - Lost Souls become free to place if you have a Pain Elemental or a Lost Soul on the map.

I then tested adding multiples of each monster, to see how much it went up per each extra monster, and to see if it would be a consistent amount. Much to my relief, it seems that once you add one copy of a monster, all the other copies are free. In other words, if you add one Zombieman to my test map, it will bump up the MAPSPR01.IMG size to 229k. If you then add fifty more, it will still be that exact same size. The MAPSPR01.IMG file thus accounts only for if a monster is loaded period - not how many copies of a monster are loaded. This is good news for us mappers, as it means we only have to worry about monster variety, not monster amount. Anything that you remove to trim below the size simply can be made up for by using monsters already on the map at no extra cost.

 

As a final test, I tried to get as empirical evidence as possible as to what the filesize limit for MAPSPR01.IMG is. My tests went as follows:

• Spider Mastermind + Revenant = 835KB (854,756 Bytes) - Map LOADS
• Spider Mastermind + Revenant + Lost Soul = 870KB (890,592 Bytes) - Map LOADS
• Spider Mastermind + Revenant + Shotgun Guy = 884KB (905,056 Bytes) - Map LOADS
• Spider Mastermind + Revenant + Zombieman = 889KB (909,836 Bytes) - Map LOADS
• Spider Mastermind + Revenant + Heavy Weapon Dude = 919KB (940,160 Bytes) - Map LOADS
• Spider Mastermind + Revenant + Cacodemon = 938KB (961,140 Bytes) - Map LOADS
• Spider Mastermind + Revenant + Arachnotron = 964KB (986,136 Bytes) - Map LOADS
• Spider Mastermind + Revenant + Pain Elemental = 977KB (999,900 Bytes) - Map LOADS
• Spider Mastermind + Revenant + Mancubus = 1062KB (1,087,160 Bytes) - Map LOADS
• Spider Mastermind + Revenant + Cyberdemon = 1149KB (1,176,144 Bytes) - Map LOADS
• Spider Mastermind + Mancubus + Cyberdemon = 1227KB (1,256,188 Bytes) - Map FAILS (Z_Malloc: Failed allocation on 1256188)
• Spider Mastermind + Revenant + Cyberdemon + Lost Soul = 1184KB (1,211,980 Bytes) - Map FAILS (P_SetupLevel: Not enough free memory 22432, Needed 1292)
• Spider Mastermind + Revenant + Mancubus + Hell Knight = 1162KB (1,189,984 Bytes) - Map LOADS
• Spider Mastermind + Revenant + Mancubus + Baron of Hell = 1175KB (1,203,388 Bytes) - Map FAILS (P_SetupLevel: Not enough free memory 31024, Needed 1292)
• Spider Mastermind + Revenant + Mancubus + Cacodemon = 1165KB (1,193,544 Bytes) - Map LOADS

Based on this, the limit for MAPSPR01.IMG is actually much higher than previously assumed - I'm figuring it's closer to 1170KB (1,200,000 bytes). Keep in mind that pickups and decorations add a little to this as well, but the gain from trimming them off will be for the most part be pretty negligible (a few kilobytes at most), so the bulk of your saving will come through monsters. Fortunately, the higher-than-assumed limit actually means you might only need to chop one or two monster types - and even then, only if your map has a ton of monster variety; most maps will fit under this just fine.

 

So in short, we've learned a few things.

1. Zombiemen actually cost more than Shotgun Guys.
2. Cacodemons actually cost more than the Hell Knight.
3. Your biggest chops that aren't total boss monsters will come from removing Mancubi from the map - you can fit at least two of most other monster types in its memory space, and if you replace them with smaller goons, several.
4. Pain Elementals seem awfully high for being so simple - this is because they also load the Lost Soul sprites. If you add a Pain Elemental to your map, Lost Souls thus become free.
5. The MAPSPR01.IMG limit is actually much higher than the roughly 800KB that @Gerardo194 had claimed - almost 50% bigger, in fact.

Hopefully this is useful for my fellow inmates in the asylum that is mapping for PS1 Doom. :)

Edited June 27, 2018 by Dark Pulse : Lost Souls are indeed free if you add a Pain Elemental.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

You know what this means boyo's? ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

[Dark Pulse]

1 minute ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

You know what this means boyo's? ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

MORE Barons! Gwahahaha!!!

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Just now, Dark Pulse said:

MORE Barons! Gwahahaha!!!

Well, barons in general since I didn't innitially use them since I thought 800kb was the cap. now I know it's higher you BETCHA I'm going to add a few of them! :3

[Dark Pulse]

1 minute ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

Well, barons in general since I didn't innitially use them since I thought 800kb was the cap. now I know it's higher you BETCHA I'm going to add a few of them! :3

Just make sure the map still loads. If there's one weakness in my test, it's that it's not under "real" map conditions.

 

But if maps work just fine with their usual geometry and my test still holds out, then yep :)

 

I'll be trying to reinstate a few of the monsters that I'd formerly cut from Open Season as a test though later tonight, so I'll find out before long.

[Dragonsbrethren]

@Dark Pulse, do your testing in a more complicated map and you'll find yourself up against different limits. While this is a nice guideline, the map itself (and likely the music used, based on what Aubrey Hodges has stated in the past) will limit how large the MAPSPR file can be.

 

1 hour ago, riderr3 said:

Also the BFALL and rock textures here will not stretch, because I've added dummy sector behind main sector, this dummy sector have zero height and his floor and ceiling is located somewhere about at the middle of main sector height. PSX Doom developers seems not used this trick.

Actually, they do this in quite a few places. It was even mentioned in the guidelines written for the Lost Levels. It's definitely a situational thing, depending on how much the map will suffer from reduced height. In Caged, I didn't bother with it, but in Well of Souls, I preferred having a little more height. I definitely want more height in Downtown. On that note...

 

4 hours ago, Dragonsbrethren said:

I'm going to experiment and see if I can use a size a little less jarring than 8x8, or if I have to drop the sky height to something more manageable like 320.

4x4 works, but 2x2 causes the same memory issue as 1x1. I wouldn't advise working on a smaller grid than 4x4, maybe even shift existing vertices around to be on the the safe side? (Most/all id maps use 8x8, but the Master Levels/Evilution/Plutonnia could be all over the place)

 

But I really don't want to blanket state "do/don't do this" yet. I'm not sure if this is just some bizarre coincidence yet or what.