I'm developing a J2ME game which uses tiled backgrounds for the levels. My question is how do I store this tile information in my game. At the moment it is stored as an array; with each number representing a different tile from the tile-sheet. This works well enough, however I don't like the fact that it is 'hard-coded' into the game because (at least in my opinion) it is harder to edit the levels, or design new ones. I was also thinking that it would be difficult if you wanted to add a 'level pack', I'm not sure on how this would be achieved though; it's not something I was planning on doing, I'm just curious.

I was wondering if there was a way I could store level data in some external file and then load this in to the game. The problem is I don't know what the limitations are for J2ME regarding file I/O, can it read in any file like Java? I am aware of the RMS, but from my experience I don't think this would work (unless I am mistaken).

Also, would loading the data in this way be too big a performance hit? Or is there another way I can achieve what I am trying to do. As I said, the way I have it at the moment works fine, and if this is the only viable option then it will suffice.