Sprites when used in StarEdit are parts of doodads that you can walk underneath. For example, tree tops and signs. It turns out that, with some heavy editing, you can change which sprite gets drawn on a doodad. Pretty soon after that discovery, we found that you didn't need a doodad at all, and you could place any sprite on the map that you want.
Many of the sprites do crash. Most (if not all) of the bullet graphics crash. DrunkenWrestler made a hypothesis that the sprites of the units that cannot be disabled will crash, but it has not been confirmed or denied yet. All of the doodads do NOT crash.
I have a question about the minimap:
I have a very basic minimap done now, but the problem is that its dimensions will always equal the map's dimensions in pixels. That is, if you make a 128x128 map, the minimap is 128x128 pixels. If you make a 256x256 (or larger) map, the minimap will overflow the default-sized box created for it. Here are my solutions:
Make the minimap a floating window like the tile palette
Make the minimap with scroll bars (or have auto-scroll if you drag across it)
Let the minimap be cropped off and just make the user resize it by hand
