---
title: "Sector map"
package: "@phaser-ae/sector-map"
tier: Pro
version: 3.0.0-0
released: 2026-10-24
updated: 2026-10-24
description: "Levels for 2.5D shooters as plain JSON: polygon sectors with floor and ceiling heights, doors, lifts, crushers, triggers, kit-bash pieces, character grids and ready meshes."
url: https://phaser.io/packs/sector-map
site: Phaser - https://phaser.io
---

# Sector map

The levels of a 2.5D shooter, as JSON a person or an editor can write: polygons with heights, and a handful of
settings for doors, lifts, slime and triggers. Snap rooms together like a kit, or paint them as characters.

## What it does

A map is a list of sectors. Each is a polygon seen from above with a floor height, a ceiling height, light and
textures. The pack works out the rest: where two sectors' edges touch it makes an opening (a step when the floors
differ, a lintel when the ceilings do), where an edge touches nothing it makes a wall, and where one sector is drawn
inside another it cuts it out, so a pit, a raised dais or a pillar is just another shape. There are no line lists or
side definitions to keep in step, which is what makes the format pleasant to edit and safe for a tool to write.

The moving parts are settings on sectors: a door drawn at its open height that shuts at the start and opens on use, a
lift drawn at its top that lowers when stepped on, a crusher, a platform, a slime floor that hurts, a secret, a light
that flickers. A jump pad throws whoever stands on it, either up and ahead or on an arc worked out to land on a ledge
the map names, whatever the game's gravity. A sector can have its own gravity, so a low-gravity room is one number, and
a conveyor or a wind can push what stands or flies in it. Lamps, torches and glows are points on the map with a colour,
a reach and a flicker, which a game turns into real lights. Triggers are data too: entering a sector, using or shooting
a wall, crossing a line or killing a tagged group can open doors, move floors, change light, switch lamps, play sounds,
spawn enemies, teleport the player or end the level.

The world can live. Fixtures are things a player opens or breaks: a toilet stall's door or a gate on a hinge that
swings and stops a body, a locker or filing cabinet whose contents come out when it opens, a pane of glass that stops
shots until enough of them break it. Signs carry room numbers and warnings; screens show scrolling terminals, video,
a hologram turning in the air, the level's plan or a security camera's view; flyers follow paths through the sky (a
ship, birds, a blimp, a searchlight sweeping a yard). Floors, ceilings and walls can scroll, animate and carry a
renderer's effect (rippling slime, a glowing computer wall). Triggers lock and unlock, break glass and change what
signs and screens say. The map keeps all of it in its saved state, and hands a presenter what to draw.

Two shortcuts write the same format. Kit-bashing snaps prefab pieces together by named sockets at any angle: rooms,
corridors, stairs and doors, and the pieces of real architecture, an octagonal hub, bends, window walls (zig-zag too),
balconies, curved and spiral stairs, a courtyard with a walkway, a slime canal with a bridge, a computer room, a
toilet block, an office and a lift to a ledge, each sized by its options. A grid paints a level as rows of characters,
each a kind of floor, a window, a stall door or a locker, and merges them into sectors.

## Features

- **Polygons with heights** — openings, walls, steps and lintels worked out from where edges touch; inner shapes cut
  out.
- **Movers** — doors that never close on a body, keyed doors, lifts, crushers and platforms, with sounds.
- **Jump pads** — up and ahead, or aimed at a point to land on, worked out for any gravity, with a sound.
- **Gravity and pushes** — a share of the game's gravity per sector, conveyors under the feet and winds through the air.
- **Lights as data** — lamps, torches, glows and spots placed on the map, switched on and off by triggers.
- **Fixtures** — hinged doors and gates, cabinets and lockers with contents, breakable and frosted glass.
- **Signs, screens and flyers** — text on walls, terminals, holograms, camera views and things crossing the sky.
- **Moving surfaces** — scrolling, animated and shimmering floors, ceilings and walls, and railings.
- **Triggers as data** — on enter, leave, use, cross, shoot, start and kill; open, close, move, light, lamp, sound,
  spawn, teleport, message, exit.
- **Kit-bash pieces** — a standard kit and made-to-measure pieces with sockets that snap together at any angle.
- **Character grids** — a level painted as rows, each character a floor, a door, slime or a secret.
- **A checker for editors** — every problem in a map as a sentence, before it is built, down to a jump pad aimed
  outside the map or above a ceiling.
- **Collision, sight, shots and hearing** — steps, headroom, drops, line of sight through openings, hitscan rays and
  sound through open doors.
- **Routes** — shared flow fields for crowds, doors and hinged doors named on the way, keys counted, glass respected.
- **Meshes** — floors, ceilings and walls with world-sized texture repeats, rebuilt only where something moved.

## Good for

- **A shooter in the style of the 1993 classics** — `sector-shooter` plays on it.
- **A level editor on the web** — a format a tool can write without bookkeeping, and a checker to show what is wrong.
- **Procedural levels** — generate pieces and snap them, or generate a grid.
- **A first-person adventure** — doors, lifts, switches and triggers without a line of game code.

## Make it yours

Every sector, edge, mover, fixture, sign, screen, flyer, trigger and thing is data, and every piece is sized by its
options. A hand-drawn map of polygons with a crusher and a red door is one use; a refinery kit-bashed from an
octagonal hub, a canal and a zig-zag window wall with hand-drawn yards around them is another; an office block of
stall doors, lockers, terminals and camera screens painted as a character grid is a third. All come out the same.

## A quick look

Snap pieces together and build the map.

```ts
const data = sectorMap.assembleMap({ place: [
    { id: 'start', piece: 'room-small', things: [{ type: 'start', x: 0, z: 2 }] },
    { id: 'hall', piece: 'corridor', join: { socket: 's', to: 'start.n' } },
    { id: 'up', piece: 'stairs', join: { socket: 'bottom', to: 'hall.n' } },
] }, sectorMap.standardKit());
const map = sectorMap.createSectorMap(data);
```

## Works with

- `sector-shooter` — a whole shooter on it.
- `fps-enemies` and `fps-bosses` — enemies and bosses that walk it, through `enemyWorld()`.
- `world-3d` — draws the meshes it builds.
- `cell-dungeon` — for levels on one floor height in square cells.

## Good to know

- One floor and one ceiling per sector: no rooms above rooms, no slopes.
- A jump pad's arc is worked out from the gravity where it starts; a path through other gravity or a wind lands
  elsewhere.
- Sectors touch along edges or nest inside one another; partly overlapping shapes are not supported.
- It draws nothing itself; `buildMeshes` hands any renderer the triangles and how each surface moves, and fixtures,
  signs, screens and flyers come as data to draw.
- Fixtures are flat: a leaf is a line, a cabinet a box nobody stands on, a window one pane per edge.

---

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