I also managed to get a level loaded from a file using ifstream, which did not take as long as I expected. The level is saved in a text document with 0 = space and 1 = block but this will change with different numbers corresponding to a different colour block. In the code I have all the levels stored in Level[MAX_LEVEL_NUMBER][BLOCK_X][BLOCK_Y] but at the moment this contains one level while I finish the rest of the mechanics. Another thing I will need to add later to the text file and loading function are passwords.
Tomorrow, I plan to get ball-block collisions working with the block disappearing, although this may take a couple of extra days to get right.
Thanks for reading
-AEdmonds