Scrolling always involves moving the background (or world) in the direction opposite the way you want a "character" to appear to be moving. It can be done with the character always centered, or with the character moving somewhat from the center to help give more of an illusion of motion. You can also choose to move large "tiles" (sprites that represent the background) or just move smaller sprites that provide an illusion of motion.
It can be done in x, y or both directions but the only thing really "different" will be the specific scripts used by the programmer.
-MrEd
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Actually, there is one alternative method that doesn't use moving sprites - which is to draw the background as an animation - draw several scenes with an incremental change in each, that the stage cycles through.
Pretty clunky, and a lot of work, but it is an alternative...
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