Sprite distributor

Unity Engine
1

I’ve an inventory system, 500+ unique sprites.
What’s a good way to fetch a sprites?

Currently I just cycle through a bunch of spritesheets and throw all their sprites in a dictionary like this

        string root = "UI/Inventory/Items/";

        for ( int i = 0; i < 17; i++ )
        {
            Sprite[] s = Resources.LoadAll<Sprite>( root + i.ToString() );

            for ( int j = 0; j < s.Length; j++ )
            {
                sprites.Add( i + ", " + j, s[j] );
            }
        }

And get the information like this

internal Sprite Get( int subcategory, int  categoryIndex  )
    {
        try
        {
            Debug.Log( string.Format( "Fetching {0}[{1}]", subcategory, v ) );
            return sprites[subcategory + ", " +categoryIndex ];
        }
        catch ( Exception )
        {
            Debug.LogError( string.Format( InventoryItemRoot + "{0}[{1}] not found.", subcategory, categoryIndex ) );
            throw;
        }
    }

But it feels pretty impractical having 500 odd sprites loaded all the time.

2

instead of pre loading all use only resources load on the sprite you want to get.