Option 1) I have made sure to put rules in the sprites whenever possible. I have also combined all of the rules for a map into one plan on one layer. So, copying it all manually will only take a few extra minutes per map.
Option 2) Might work for others having this problem, but the effort I would have to put into it for my game would be more than that of copying the maps manually. There are two reasons for this. (1) I am setting up my game so that the player can choose which level he wants to play rather than saving and loading. (2) I have used the animating tile feature to create different themes for each tile. It might look kinda funny for the tiles to change from grass to desert when the player entered the new level.
Option 3) Sounds interesting... have no idea how to do that.
Anyway, thanks for trying.
p.s. If you do decide to add a feature to help with this, you might consider including a way to allow multiple people to work on maps simultaneously. For example, let's say that I had three friends that volunteered to build maps for my game. If I sent them each a copy of the source code, they could each make maps. But when they were done, I wouldn't be able to put them together into one game. That's just something to consider.
