You should have some classes with inheritance I suppose?
Class Item -> Class ItemSword, class ItemRing, class ItemPotion which all use the class Item.
If you have this I should recommend you to make 2 classes, class ItemList, class Inventory.
The ItemList class keeps every item, a dropped item and an item in the inventory. So all your items will be stored in this class using a vector.
The Inventory class only hold what you have picked up. To receive all the picked up items you want to say something like:
m_pInventory = m_pItemList->GetAllStoredItems();
So what this means if each item needs to have a bool which says it is stored or not stored.
Then to receive all the stored items you do something like this:
vector<Items*> ItemList::GetAllStoredItems()
{
vector<Items*> tempVec;
for(/* look through the vector */)
{
if(m_VecItems.at(i)->IsStored() {
tempVec.pushback(m_VecItems.at(i));
}
}
}
This is how I should do it. Certainly there are better ways but this should do also.
EDIT: Ah you are working in Python? I have no idea how it works so I'm doubting Python uses classes. But you say you can handle each language so I won't edit the code I've written.
Good luck.~EngineProgrammer