After matches in my game, players are given items by the server, and I need a way for the players to figure out what new items they have obtained since they last played. I have a few strategies to accomplish this, although they all seem to have issues in specific scenarios.
My two strategies so far were:
1. Save the player's inventory locally before they leave the game and compare the new inventory to the local one when the player rejoins. If someone goes wrong with saving the inventory or a player switches devices, then the player would count all items as "new" and that would be an issue.
2. Store the date of the item's creation in the annotation and use the date to determine whether the item is new or not. I don't think this would work with stackable items, however.
Can anyone suggest which of these solutions would work better or perhaps has another solution?