This suggestion is to add 16 new blocks which are opaque to the light engine but rendered transparently.
There would be two crafting recipes for each Tinted Stained Glass:
One Dye plus eight Tinted Glass produces eight Tinted Stained Glass.
One Stained Glass plus four Amethyst Shards produces one Tinted Stained Glass.
Both recipes use the same amount of Amethyst Shards and the same amount Glass.
The recipe using Amethyst and Stained Glass uses half as much dye as the other.
The recipe using Tinted Glass and Dye would be present for players who upgrade their world and had previously crafted lots of Tinted Glass.
Tinted glass recipe — 8 tinted glass = 4 glass + 16 amethyst
First suggested recipe — 8 tinted stained glass = 4 glass + 16 amethyst + 1 dye
Second suggested recipe: — 8 tinted stained glass = 8 glass + 32 amethyst + 1 dye
Maybe I’m doing my math wrong, but the second suggested recipe seems way more expensive.
Either way, I’m just unnecessarily nitpicking recipe numbers. The actual idea itself is cool.