Elysian Shadows

OK, I want to make a background for a 2D game, but don't know how. Any suggestions? What's "tiling" mean?

Check out lazyfoo's great index of tutorials... here. Also check his articles (they're also on the site) once you've gone through most of the tutorials.

He goes over stuff like color keying, input, tiling, scrolling, scrolling backgrounds, even multithreading. He's the guy that I learned SDL from, and I think his tutorials will be a good tool for you, too!

Thank you, I'll check it out.

Is there a specific graphics program that is best used for doing backgrounds? Do you use a certain graphics program to do character sprites, and another for backgrounds, or is their one software used to do both?