Create your background image but load it with LoadAnimImage as a bunch of, say, 256x256 tiles.
If you load an entire bitmap as a single 2048x600 bitmap
A) it will take a hell of a lot of graphics memory as the whole image will have to be sent to the graphics card in order to draw it (even if most of it can't be seen), and:
B) it might not even work on some hardware.
This is how I'm doing it with the zoomable, scrollable map for Magicville. Objects on the map are given in x/y coordinates relative to the overall size of the image (1536x1152 represented by 108 (12x9) 128x128 tiles)
If you load an entire bitmap as a single 2048x600 bitmap
A) it will take a hell of a lot of graphics memory as the whole image will have to be sent to the graphics card in order to draw it (even if most of it can't be seen), and:
B) it might not even work on some hardware.
This is how I'm doing it with the zoomable, scrollable map for Magicville. Objects on the map are given in x/y coordinates relative to the overall size of the image (1536x1152 represented by 108 (12x9) 128x128 tiles)