Frankly, I don't care who develops such as mod as long as it's historical, immersive and enjoyable...and doesn't come with a truckload of baggage.
I think only the very literal or imaginative will take terms like "conversion" or "porting" to mean "cut and paste" or "SH3 is better than SH4 and we will turn SH4 into SH3 and make you all suffer".
But who cares? Won't any conversion of SH3, or for that matter GWX, WAC, NYGM, LSH3 etc be just another option for players to try? Sure, if the dev teams converted verbatim with only the edges filed to make it fit, I'd be disappointed. But that just means that I, and anyone else who feels that way, would try one of the other mods and then settle on the one we like best. Certainly a mod that takes advantage of SH4, is fresh and utilises SH4 to its maximum potential would appeal to me more than a flat transfer, which TBH I'd just see as lazy.
But somehow, at least as far as GWX is concerned, I don't think the modders would just do this - just look at the occasional posts on this forum from GWX developers that show that they're investigating the SH4 structure behind the scenes. BUT, history hasn't changed since SH3 was released, so why wouldn't they use what they've already researched as a basis? And why wouldn't they use their SH3 modding experience? I know I certainly would. Just because it was applied to SH3 does not make it irrelevant.
At the end of the day players will determine how popular any "conversion", or perceived "conversion" from SH3 is. So I don't understand why people here, ironically SH4 loyalists, get so protective about it. I'm aware of at least three "teams" doing Atlantic work for SH4 and a few individuals working on components that will undoubtably connect up to something larger at some point. In the end, I'll choose the mod I like best, regardless of who created it. Viva la choice.
