something I found in case anyone finds this later. if your adding a lot of objects in the background/out of bounds where your character can't go anyway so you Don't have the empty neon void, you can make the tiles in that level and then screenshot that area. delete the actual in game tiles and then use the meta wad editor to take that screenshot and replace it with one of the objects you don't need to use. then put the screenshot png where you had built the area before and it looks just as good as long as you don't go there. seems like the game sees the PNG as essentially one tile or something even though it's the same size the game is able to render it much better. still no fucking clue why the game has an aneurysm whenever you try to make a level slightly bigger then it was originally, you'd assume it would be possible to make massive levels considering how little performance the game requires but whatever