Yes, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the point was that 0x8000 is like negative zero and so of no utility, redundant. So let's make it useful.
- There are no redundant numbers like -0
- Adding two integers together in this format works with negative and positive numbers with no special case.
-1 is actually 0xFF or 0xFFFF etc. So 0xFF + 0x01 (-1 + 1) "overflows" to 0.
Fair that sentinel value is sentinel value, I suppose. But it is not like it is not a known and unique number in that encoding.