Displaying single-object pickups with carrying and not-carrying icons

Graphic icons are an effective way to inform the player that they are carrying an item. In this recipe, if no star is being carried, a gray-filled icon in a blocked-off circle will be displayed in the top-left corner of the screen:

Figure 3.11: Example of a single-object pickup

Then, once a star has been picked up, a yellow-filled star icon will be displayed. In many cases, icons are clearer (they don’t require reading and thinking about) and can also be smaller on-screen than text messages that indicate player status and inventory items.

This recipe will also illustrate the benefits of the MVC design pattern, which we described in the previous recipe – we are changing how to communicate with the user (using the View via icons rather than text), but we can use, with no changes required, the PlayerInventory script class (the Model-Controller), which detects player-star collisions and...