   getting the color of a pixel
  in a game I'm planning, I have maps, which have abstract shapes. I want to be able to import an image, and, in java, create a map based on the image. I want to read in the image and take all the nontransparent pixels and put that in the map. all the transparent pixels will just be disregarded. Is there any way that I can do this?   
  The way to get the value of an individual pixel in an image depends on the library you use to load the image and perhaps the format of the image data.