The easiest way to get this part of the history wrong is to draw a clean arrow
from SW4 to H3 and call it done.
The actual record shows cross-pollination.
s3lf exists before the May SW4 burst#
The St4sh history records:
The public H3lp Yours3lf Nexus page records its original upload on April 27, 2025.
Therefore H3’s lineage cannot honestly be described as “created after SW4.”
Its headline s3lf work already exists before the May 7 Starwind-Builder burst.
SW4 imports ideas too#
The direction also goes the other way. Builder commit
fe57c24
explicitly says it adds the protectedTable class from CHIM.
The Starwind skunkworks was therefore a consumer and proving ground for helper ideas being developed elsewhere, not an isolated birthplace for every abstraction it contained.
May 25: helpers migrate into the H3 line#
After the Starwind burst:
72c7818d— addsLogMessageandgetScriptContexthelpers.f7080bd8— adds theprotectedTableinterface.257aabfd— migrates everything from s3lf into H3lp Yours3lf.
Later:
3b1f8a75— 2025-11-11 — migrates the camera-helper module into H3.
The supplied code archaeology identifies the old SW4 helper files as ancestors of modern H3 surfaces such as ProtectedTable, CamHelper, ScriptContext, and LogMessage. The public chronology above shows when those concepts entered the H3 line; the exact source-level ancestry comes from comparing the surviving code, not merely from the dates.
T4rg3t5: the targeting experiment becomes a product#
The SW4 lock-on manager contains recognizable later T4 behavior: screen-space target selection, nearest-to-center scoring, directional switching, line of sight, target markers, distance limits, health-based presentation, dead-target switching, and camera/player tracking.
The standalone T4 line appears later in public Git:
3a61d1f7— 2025-10-26 —Initial commit for t4rg3t5.36a743df— October 27 — switches targeting to events for moddability.d6026c15— October 27 — adds animations and finalizes the early documentation.
The public T4rg3t5 Nexus page was originally uploaded on October 28, 2025 and describes it as a lock-on targeting framework for OpenMW. It also lists H3lp Yours3lf as a requirement.
The St4sh line later records:
The correct lineage model#
The evidence supports this model better than a simple fork tree:
CHIM / other experiments -----+
|
v
s3lf / H3 (Apr 2025) <----> SW4 Starwind skunkworks (May 2025)
^ |
| |
+--- helpers migrate -----+
|
+---- lock-on design ----> T4 (Oct 2025+)Interpretation#
SW4 is best understood as a high-pressure consumer and incubator:
- some abstractions arrived from other experiments;
- some helper implementations/ideas escaped back into H3;
- the lock-on system later matured into T4;
- several Starwind-specific systems never escaped and are now being resurrected for R3mastered.
That nuance matters because the modern rule is use the evolved descendant when one exists. R3mastered should not copy an old SW4 camera helper or lock-on manager merely because the fossil contains one.