2D Space Shooter Game: Health Powerup

Objective: Create a health collectable that heals the player by 1 ship. Update the visuals of the Player’s health to reflect this.

I’ve created a health powerup icon of my own:

• Whatever image for the health powerup you have, import it into the Project pane and set it as a sprite as we did for the Ammo Powerup in the previous article.
• Drag the Ammo Powerup prefab from the Project panel to the Heirarchy panel to make it into the Health prefab.
• In the Heirarchy pane, rename the powerup to “Powerup_Health”.
• From the Project panel, in the Sprites folder, drag the health sprite to the Sprite Renderer’s Sprite field in the Inspector pane.
• Open the Powerup.cs script.
• To the enum _powerupIDs, add “, Health” after the last item.

    public enum _powerupIDs
    {
        TripleShot,
        SpeedBoost,
        Shields,
        Ammo,
        Health
    }

• For the Powerup_Health prefab, in the Powerup (Script Component), Inspector panel properties, change the Powerup ID to “Health”
• Make the Health Powerup into a new saved prefab. In the Hierarchy pane, drag the Health Powerup down to the Project pane, into the Prefab/Powerups folder and make it as a new original prefab.
• In the Hierarchy pane, select the Spawn_Manager game object.
• In the Inspector pane, expand the the “Powerup Prefab” array.
• Increase the size of the array by one.
• In the Project pane, drag the “Powerup_Health” prefab to the Element 4 field.

• Open the Player.cs script.
• Add a new method for adding a new ship to the player’s life. Use an if conditional statement to check the variable _lives if it’s less than 3 then increment _lives by one and call the UpdateLives() method from the UI Manager script

    public void AddLife()
    {
        if (_lives < 3)
        {
            _lives++;
            _UIManager.UpdateLives(_lives);
        }
    }

• Open the Powerup.cs script
• In the method OnTriggerEnter2D(), in the switch case statements for the _powerupID variable, add a case block for “_powerupIDs.Health” and call the AddLife() method in the Player script.

switch (_powerupID)
{
    case _powerupIDs.TripleShot:
        player.TripleShotActive(_powerupDuration);
        Debug.Log("Powerup::OnTriggerEnter2D:switch _powerupID=0 TripleShot");
        break;
    case _powerupIDs.SpeedBoost:
        player.SpeedBoostActive(_powerupDuration);
        Debug.Log("Powerup::OnTriggerEnter2D:switch _powerupID=1 SpeedBoost");
        break;
    case _powerupIDs.Shields:
        player.ShieldsActive();
        Debug.Log("Powerup::OnTriggerEnter2D:switch _powerupID=2 Shields");
        break;
    case _powerupIDs.Ammo:
        player.AmmoRefill();
        Debug.Log("Powerup::OnTriggerEnter2D:switch _powerupID=3 Ammo");
        break;
    case _powerupIDs.Health:
        player.AddShip();
        Debug.Log("Powerup::OnTriggerEnter2D:switch _powerupID=4 AddLife");
        break;
    default:
        Debug.Log("Powerup::OnTriggerEnter2D:switch No_powerupID");
        break;
}

Now when you test, after losing a ship and collecting a health powerup, a new ship will be added to the life UI.