Those plans are there yes, for the simple reason I need such thing for dev06 too. Actually I think Polka2 development will go sync with our dev06 project. Thanks to our dev06 concept I actually am planning more features than I planned half a year ago. Neat gamedeveloper-features!
One of the new concepts is that each tile has 9 layers, 1 for the patterndata and 8 for sprites (for sc4 compatibility). Editing 16x16 (4 tiles combined) was also a concept. With this, it should be possible to edit 16x16 sprites. For the editor you'd actually be editing 4 8x8 sprites, but that's all a matter of exporting/converting.
As for 'when': as said, it'll be in-sync with our dev06 entry, and atm we're working on our psg-scc player.