Create a 2D world with a bitmap

[hoxa]

Dear,

I'm new to game programming and I've got a project for school to create a game like worms. (you know the team17.com games).

With a little research I found that the best way to create the 2D world would be to hold a bitmap of 1 and 0 to switch between background and foreground. So that I could load 2 images one for the background like the worms game the sea or something and another image with the map that is placed on it. Now because of that bitmap if I shoot something I could simply replace a 1 in a 0 so that there is a whole in the map..

The only thing is, I can't find tutorials how to create such bitmap to load it and specify with an array of 1 and 0 to what is foreground and background?

Could someone help me?

Kind regards,