DEEP DIVES

Minecraft players often face a dilemma. Getting attacked by a skeleton, zombie, creeper or spider is a deeply unpleasant experience but it’s also often the easiest or only way to get hold of key crafting materials like gunpowder, bone, string, and rotten flesh. What can I say? No pain, no gain.
Minecraft 玩家总是会面临一些麻烦事儿。被骷髅、僵尸、苦力怕或者蜘蛛蹂躏的感觉的确很不愉快，但同时这也是最简单（甚至唯一）的方式来获得一些关键的合成材料，比如火药、骨头、线以及腐肉。没什么好说的，毕竟没有付出就没有回报。

But there’s another approach that crafty players take – building a mob farm . Mob farms are structures that are intentionally unlit to allow dangerous monsters to spawn, but monsters are then funneled into a place where they can be killed quickly and safely.
但对于另外一些富有创造力的玩家来说还可采取其他方法 —— 建个刷怪场。刷怪场是一种内部黑暗的结构，里面会生成那些危险的怪物，但很快它们会被转移到一个能被快速安全击杀的地方。

In the past, it would sometimes be difficult to get a mob farm working. The need for total darkness inside made it impossible to take a peek inside to see what’s wrong. But in the most recent Minecraft update, we added a block that makes things a little easier. It’s called tinted glass, and it’s our block of the week.
在过去，让刷怪场正常工作常常很麻烦。因为这需要刷怪场内部完全黑暗，这使得连想看一眼里面出现啥问题了都很困难。但在最近的Minecraft更新中，我们添加了一种能让这件事变得简单亿点的方块：遮光玻璃。这也是我们这周要介绍的方块。

Tinted glass is crafted with a block of glass and four amethyst shards. It behaves almost exactly like glass in that you can place it down and see through it, but it differs in two key ways.
遮光玻璃可由一个玻璃方块和四个紫水晶碎片合成。它看起来和玻璃几乎完全一样：你可以放置它并透过它看到其它东西，但它和玻璃有两个关键的不同点：

First, light can’t pass through it at all. This is what makes it very handy for mob spawners – you can see what’s going on inside without disrupting the spawning process with light. It’s also useful in mushroom farms for much the same reason
第一，光线完全无法穿透它。这对刷怪场来说非常方便——你可以直接看到里面发生了啥，而不需要用光来破坏刷怪过程。同理，这对蘑菇厂来说也很有用。

Second, when you break a piece of tinted glass it’ll drop like most other blocks, rather than shattering into a zillion pieces like glass. That’s a little favour from us to you – we know amethyst isn’t easy to get hold of, and you won’t want to waste it.
第二，当你破坏遮光玻璃时，它会像其他方块一样掉落，而不是像玻璃一样碎成渣。这是我们对你的一些小小心意——我们知道紫水晶并不好获取，而你也不想浪费它。

But here’s a fun fact for you – this isn’t the first time that tinted glass has been added to Minecraft. On 1 April 2013, we announced Minecraft 2.0 – a totally new version of the game, designed to bring Minecraft to the next level. It had fat sheep, diamond-laying chickens, pink withers, burnt-out torches, happy creepers, and love golems – as well as tinted glass.
但是有个有趣的冷知识：这并不是有色玻璃[1]首次被加入到Minecraft中。在2013年4月1日，我们发布了Minecraft 2.0 —— 一个全（愚）新（人）的（节）版本，并想通过这次大更新把Minecraft带到一个全新的发展阶段。它添加了被喂胖的绵羊、钻石鸡、粉红凋灵、燃尽的火把、快乐的苦力怕、可爱的傀儡，以及有色玻璃。

We distributed this new version to a bunch of top-tier YouTubers before realising that actually there wasn’t anything wrong with the existing version of the game, so we deleted the new version and kept selling regular ol’ Minecraft instead.
我们把这个新版本分发给了一群顶级的YouTuber，之后才意识到现有版本的游戏没有任何问题，所以我们删除了新版本，然后继续卖现有的Minecraft。

Tinted glass isn’t the only feature of Minecraft 2.0 to make it into the real game. It also included coal and redstone blocks, which are now part of the regular game too. Will we add burnt-out torches and pink withers in the next update? Who knows...
遮光玻璃并不是唯一的从Minecraft 2.0带到正式游戏的特性。这还包括了煤炭块、红石块，而这些现在已经是正式游戏的一部分了。下次更新我们会添加燃尽的火把和粉红凋灵吗？谁知道呢...

译注：
[1]Tinted glass在愚人节版本Minecraft 2.0中译作“有色玻璃”，在正式版本中译作“遮光玻璃”。二者的英文名相同，但译名、作用不同。



【dengyu 译自官网 2021 年 10 月 07 日发布的 Block of the Week: Tinted Glass；原作者 Duncan Geere】
【本文排版借助了：SPXX】