Thread: Loading textures to screen

i want to get a 2d texture of a spaceship and then.....blah blah...the rest can wait until i do this first.

so:
1. how would i go about getting a 2D texture for my vertical shooter game?
2. with the API im using (HAPI - if you want more info just ask) there is a load texture function. all i have to do is initialise my texture, declare a pointer to it and then use the load texture function.....or so i thought.

Code:

BYTE *spaceship.tga = backgroundPtr;
HAPI_LoadTexture ("spaceship.tga", &backgroundPtr);

apparently my pointer to the texture is 'an undeclared identifier' and i have a syntax error which states there is a missing semicolon before the '.' in the first line - i tried to fix it....unsuccessfully.