Whats a good way to save tile sprites from my level editor?
<p>I have built a tile based level editor in java, It is just about completed, but as I was writing the method to save the level, that all of my tiles were image sprites and I dont know of a way to save them so that the actual game can read them without making each tile it's own image file which I would then need to import to read in the real game.  (there are over 700 possible tiles, a level would probably use 100 of those);</p>

<p>My question to you all: what is the best way to save all these tiles? I am familiar with saving things to a text file but I am not able to save these images in the same way. Is there a way to save the level so that my text based information is saved in the same place as my tile sprites?</p>

<p>here is my tile class and what I have so far in terms of my save method</p>

<pre><code>    public class Tile {
     int x, y, w, h, type;
     BufferedImage layer1Image;
     BufferedImage layer2Image;
     BufferedImage layer3Image;
     BufferedImage layer4Image;
     boolean walkable;

     public Tile(int x, int y, int w, int h) {
      walkable = false;
      this.x = x;
      this.y = y;
      this.w = w;
      this.h = h;
      type = 0;
      layer1Image = null;
      layer2Image = null;
      layer3Image = null;
      layer4Image = null;
     }

     public Tile() {

     }

     public int getX() {
      return x;
     }

     public int getY() {
      return y;
     }

     public int getW() {
      return w;
     }

     public int getH() {
      return h;
     }

     public void setX(int newX) {
      x = newX;
     }

     public void setY(int newY) {
      y = newY;
     }

     public void setW(int newW) {
      w = newW;
     }

     public void setH(int newH) {
      h = newH;
     }

     public boolean mouseOver(int mouseX, int mouseY) {
      if (mouseX &gt; x &amp;&amp; mouseX &lt; x + w &amp;&amp; mouseY &gt; y &amp;&amp; mouseY &lt; y + h) {
       return true;
      }
      return false;
     }

     public int getType() {
      return type;
     }

     public boolean getWalkable() {
      return walkable;
     }

     public BufferedImage getLayer1Image() {
      return layer1Image;
     }

     public BufferedImage getLayer2Image() {
      return layer2Image;
     }

     public BufferedImage getLayer3Image() {
      return layer3Image;
     }

     public BufferedImage getLayer4Image() {
      return layer4Image;
     }

     public void clearImages() {
      layer1Image = null;
      layer2Image = null;
      layer3Image = null;
      layer4Image = null;
      walkable = true;
     }

     public void setImage(BufferedImage image, int layer) {
      switch (layer) {
      case 0:
       layer1Image = image;
       break;
      case 1:
       layer2Image = image;
       break;
      case 2:
       layer3Image = image;
      case 3:
       layer4Image = image;
      }
     }

     public void display(Graphics g, int x, int y, int w, int h, int zoom) {
      g.setColor(Color.BLACK);
      g.drawImage(layer1Image, x, y, w, h, null);
      g.drawImage(layer2Image, x, y, w, h, null);
      g.drawImage(layer3Image, x, y, w, h, null);
      g.drawImage(layer4Image, x, y, w, h, null);
      g.drawRect(x, y, w, h);

     }

     public void getAttributes(Tile tile) {
      layer1Image = tile.getLayer1Image();
      layer2Image = tile.getLayer2Image();
      layer3Image = tile.getLayer3Image();
      layer4Image = tile.getLayer4Image();
      x = tile.getX();
      y = tile.getY();
      w = tile.getW();
      h = tile.getH();
      walkable = tile.getWalkable();
      type = tile.getType();

     }

     public void setWalkable(boolean b) {
      walkable = b;
     }



          //  Here is the save, its in a different class in case my formatting in the post is screwy






        public void doSaveAsText() {
      if (fileDialog == null) {
       fileDialog = new JFileChooser();
      }
      File selectedFile;
      if (editFile == null) {
       selectedFile = new File("levelData.txt");
      } else {
       selectedFile = new File(editFile.getName());
      }
      fileDialog.setSelectedFile(selectedFile);
      fileDialog.setDialogTitle("Select File to be Saved");
      int option = fileDialog.showSaveDialog(this);
      if (option != JFileChooser.APPROVE_OPTION) {
       return;
      }
      selectedFile = fileDialog.getSelectedFile();
      if (selectedFile.exists()) {
       int response = JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog(this, "Already exists, overwrite?", "Confirm Save", JOptionPane.YES_NO_OPTION,
         JOptionPane.WARNING_MESSAGE);
       if (response != JOptionPane.YES_OPTION) {
        return;
       }

      }
      PrintWriter out;
      try{
       FileWriter stream = new FileWriter(selectedFile);
       out = new PrintWriter(stream);
      } catch (Exception e){
       JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(this, "error");
       return;
      }
      try{
       out.println("LevelEditor v1.0");
       for(int i = 0; i &lt; mapPanel.tilesList.size(); i++){
        Tile currentTile = mapPanel.tilesList.get(i);
        out.println("startTile");
        out.println("" + currentTile.getX());
        out.println("" + currentTile.getY());
        out.println("" + currentTile.getW());
        out.println("" + currentTile.getH());
        out.println("" + currentTile.getWalkable());

        out.println("endTile");
       }
       out.close();
      }catch(Exception e){
       System.exit(0);
      }

     }



Any suggestions would be great
</code></pre>
