   2D sidescroller layering
  Can anyone recommend a technique for layering elements of a 2D sidescroller?  I'm very new to this.Thanks!   
  Layering isnt very difficult. You just render more then one layer. You can move the layer at the same speed, or slower to make it look like its in the distance.   ;  you can render a background sky for example, then for example a paralax layer which scrolls 3 times as slow as the normal scroll (map position) etc, then another paralax layer two times as slow etc.you can also use a technique using linked list in a 2d array, where each element of the array a poistion represents with it's layer's for that position.   