   Mapping 2D landscapes for a side scrolling platformer
  Right now I have a landscape that my character walks along.  I am very much in the learning stages but I have a character and a few baddies walking around on this background that I have drawn.  It's 2500 x 900 and I have a camera that moves with the character.   The issue is that right now I load in the background.png image which has a sky portion with my solid colour for transparency and the bottom is the landscape.  I run a little scan routine (starts at Y = 0 for every x position in my image and pump the Y value of the first non-transparent pixel into an array at the index which is the X coord.  This works fine for a very simple landscape and no multiplatform aspects to my map.  I just currently cannot think of a good way to do this and of course my issue is that this way I am using is very limited, pretty cheesy and ultimately not practical.  So, I was wondering if the knowledgeable folks here have suggestions on properly mapping multilevel landscapes for my character to walk on.  This level for example is going to be caves and caverns with multiple areas to climb up and climb down, go across etc and with complex patterns like that I just don't have ideas on the best way to map this out.Any help would be appreciated.ThanksCal   
  Nowadays it's usually common, to have a seperate collision map, from your graphics display map.The collision map, could be made up of simple lines, connected together, and is moved with the display map, to keep both in sinc. But of course, the collision map is never displayed ( well, you would display it when creating it, of course but for the final game, it gets hidden )Or, you could use a seperate image, made up of solid color for the collision map which gets moved to keep in sinc with the display map.And you would test the position of your character against the collision map, and not the display map.KJM;  Understood.  Ok thanks for your help.CheersCal   