light Zombies aren't blind

[GG Cannon]

As anyone who has ever seen a flashlight from far away pointed at them in a rural area will tell you, when everything around you is pure darkness, those things can be very visible from VERY far away.
It surprises me how, even in pure darkness areas, zombies seem to ignore flashlights and car headlights pointed directly at them or how they won't feel too attracted to a house with every single light inside turned on when electricity has long been cut off.

 

My suggestion would be:
 

1. If you point your flashlight or car headlights towards zombies in the dark or at night for too long, they will notice you even from farther away and come to you.
   The time needed for that "notice you due to the light" to happen should be a lot longer the farther from you they are (but the cone of light will also be bigger there, so a lot more may notice you) AND they need to be looking towards your direction in order to see that light (zombies that are looking back won't notice).
   This means that for example:
   -Stopping your car at night with the headlights on and going into a building could be a bad idea, since when you return, a group of zombies that was down the streets could have surrounded your car.
   -You could use your flashlight to slowly bait some zombies in your direction from far away to slowly trim down a horde.
   -A carpentry post with a flashlight used as light source needs to be placed taking its light into consideration in order not to constantly attract zombies towards your base.
    
2. Lights on inside a house or fireplaces at night should attract zombies nearby that look towards it for a while (even lights in higher floors).
   Similarly with #1, it should take longer for the zombie to be attracted to the house depending on the distance and they need to be looking towards it.
   Curtains and sheets should mitigate but not fully nullify this.
   Boarding up the windows or barricading it with bookcases should fully nullify this.
   This means that for example:
   -Early in the game, zombies would gather around buildings that have lights on inside and those buildings would naturally have a higher amount of zombies in or around even later in the game.
   -If your house windows are higher than the fence line, it could attract several zombies from down the street towards your "safe" spot, turning it into a death trap.
   -You could purposefully light a few houses early in the game as a way to attract zombies towards them and away from your base.
   -For taller buildings (in case there even is the possibility of starting the game already on Louisville), the higher the floor, the farther away it should attract zombies from, but nullify the effect from zombies nearer (so if a light is on a very high floor, zombies that are up to a certain distance won't see it since they would have to be looking up and not forward).
   
   3- Three words for you: Visible Light Spectrum.
   As an added to both suggestions above, it could be very interesting if, due to deterioration with zombification and decay, if the zombies eye cone cells degraded and they lost the ability to perceive a few colors of light, more specifically, red and violet, which are the lowest and the highest wavelengths of light.
   As such, changing your lamps for the flashlight, car headlights or inside lighting for either a red or a violet color would render both effects from #1 and #2 nullified.
   You could carry 2 flashlights with you, one with red or violet lightbulb to not attract zombies attention, even though the color makes it slightly harder to see and another with a common white lightbulb, that doesn't bother you to see, but can attract zombies attention.
   
   If we add both sides with a few craftable battery powered spotlights(with an effect that makes zombies notice it twice as fast) and other "light decoys" and trap mix it with fire or bomb traps and have interesting strategies to deal with hordes that can be used even way after electricity has been cut off.
   
   This would bring a whole new dimension of strategy and danger to the game.
   
   
   
   Light sources doesn't just help you see in the dark, but also makes others see you...

[getstoopid]

These are really some cool and interesting ideas! =)

[TheUltiM8Guy]

Cool ideas, but although project zomboid is about realism and stuff, zombies themselves are not quite a realistic idea. Also zombies in PZ are based on George Romero's zombies. In that case I think that zombies' awareness should be an option and not a "proper zombie" trait.

[GG Cannon]

5 hours ago, TheUltiM8Guy said:

Also zombies in PZ are based on George Romero's zombies. In that case I think that zombies' awareness should be an option and not a "proper zombie" trait.

Good point. I also believe that this suggestion should be something that should be an option in sandbox and server settings and change based on the standard difficulties (such as survival or apocalypse).

Good thing about that is that I don't believe the ability to perceive or not certain light spectrum was approached in the Romero zombies, but they change quite a bit from movie to movie and I believe in a few ones, they proved to be attracted to light as well, while even if that wasn't depicted, it wouldn't be absurd since to imagine.

Even for cases where your settings are so that zombies are active during the day and inactive at night, I believe there could even be an option so that they also become active under artificial light, so that inside buildings and under your flashlight, they could go back to being active and stay active even a few moments after they return to darkness.

[Papa Juliet Whiskey]

Only skimmed the first part(damn lunch breaks are too short), but I more or less agree.

 

At present, light doesn't do anything to attract zombies, if I understand it. It's why flicking a light switch at night generates about as much noise as your character shouting to fill that void. Unfortunately, there is no mechanic to nullify that effect if you've got blinds or curtains closed, and I think it only applies to lights in buildings, and not flashlights, lighters, car lights etc.

 

Build 42 is getting some ambient lighting overhaul,  so hopefully fixing their eyesight to light sources is on the agenda,  but I can't say for certain.

[duh7]

All 3 ideas are great. 

Yes it shuld be implemented.

Light shuld attract zombies and we shuld have option to use it as distraction.

Towns with still working electriction shuld attract more zombies than a dark place.

At night they can go after stars or moon if devs like it.