Calculus World and thoughts about my experience
I hope others enjoyed the process of building a world as much as I did. This may be attributed to the content supporting the world and my level of enjoyment of the subject matter.
About my process experience:
First I began with the concept of calculus and how it related to the other mathematical subjects. The concept included the great mathematicians of the past who are illustrated as the figure heads of a specific subject, such as Pythagoras :: Geometry. I wanted to world to communicate to all levels of people, whether they were novices or experts with math. After some concept sketches, a few historical background checks, some architectural research and some preliminary world layout, I came up with the first itteration.
It was trashed, all of it.
Focusing specifically on calculus and ignoring my original broad target audience lifted the constraint that I had burden myself with. After reading A Tour of Calculus, by David Berlinski, I eliminated my tunnel vision of how this world could be built.
Using some concept sketches I solved some of the issued involved with world relation...but not nearly all of them. I would figure out other issues by writing communications involving several of the world population objects. This forced me to think about how an object communicates, why it exists where it does, why is there an encounter that requires communication, and what prompted the encounter. Because Calculus World is more abstract that most others, these issues were critical to overcome, otherwise world issues such as placement, existence, communication, movement, etc. would not be flushed out.
There still remained other issues, mostly having to do with physical existence, world orientation, and object placement. By constructing a physical model, these questions were answered. In short, sketches solved some issues, written communication (and other written exercises) solved others, and a physical model solved most of the rest.
I got to the point where I had more content concerning world issues than I could fit in the atlas; unforunately, some stuff did not make it in due to scope and time. Below is a link to the atlas (last updated December 4th). It is meant to be viewed like an open book.
hope you enjoy.
Calculus World at sunset