Mark Oates said:
The downside is that that it will dramatically inflate the size of the file, so it's mostly only practical for smaller image files.
Are you sure? For me the exe size increases exactly by the amount of the file I encode in the way I suggested in my post.
Here's the generator I used (haven't actually tested to see if it actually loads the files though 
):
1#include <stdlib.h>
2#include <stdio.h>
3#include <string.h>
4
5int main(int argc, char** argv)
6{
7 if(argc < 3)
8 {
9 printf("Usage:\n%s infile outfile_no_ext\n", argv[0]);
10 exit(-1);
11 }
12
13 FILE* infile = fopen(argv[1], "r");
14 if(infile == 0)
15 {
16 printf("Error opening %s for reading.\n", argv[1]);
17 exit(-1);
18 }
19
20 char* outfilename = malloc(strlen(argv[2] + 3));
21 sprintf(outfilename, "%s.c", argv[2]);
22 FILE* outfile = fopen(outfilename, "w");
23 if(outfile == 0)
24 {
25 printf("Error opening %s for writing.\n", outfilename);
26 exit(-1);
27 }
28
29 fputs("#include \"allegro5/allegro_memfile.h\"\n", outfile);
30 fputs("static const unsigned char _filedata[] = {", outfile);
31
32 unsigned char byte;
33 size_t size = 0;
34 while(fread(&byte, 1, 1, infile) == 1)
35 {
36 if(size > 0)
37 fputs(", ", outfile);
38
39 char hex[5];
40 sprintf(hex, "0x%X", byte);
41 fputs(hex, outfile);
42 size++;
43 }
44 fputs("};\n", outfile);
45
46 char size_string[256];
47 sprintf(size_string, "%zd", size);
48
49 fputs("ALLEGRO_FILE* load_", outfile);
50 fputs(argv[2], outfile);
51 fputs("()\n{\n return al_open_memfile((void*)_filedata, ", outfile);
52 fputs(size_string, outfile);
53 fputs(", \"w\");\n}\n", outfile);
54
55 fclose(infile);
56 fclose(outfile);
57}
]]>
(right? I think this is how the C++ linker works)
I'm sorry if my ill-formed words offended you. 
