Making a browser game: anyone got thoughts?

[eluser]Bramme[/eluser]
Hey all

after a well deserved holiday, I start working again on monday, coding stuff etc. Though I'd like to try something new in my free coding time as well.

I started playing Travian a while back and thought "Gee, this would be fun to make myself". And then I thought: "hmm, wouldn't it be cool if I could do this with CI". So now I'm gathering ideas, building a storyline and what things I'd like to implement.

But I'd also like this to be a sort of experiment: how much can you achieve with pre-built code. See, I had a discussion with a fellow programmer a while back who was writing his own framework and stumbled upon some problems, I told him "why go through all the trouble, why not use CodeIgniter for example?" and he basically called me lazy. He was adamant about writing all of his code himself.

So now I'd like to use as much libraries and frameworks as possible and demonstrate what can be done with community code!

So if you know off anything that could help me, please post here! I'm thinking auth libraries, stuff that would help the game engine etc...

If you've got lots of ideas, you could pitch them as well offcourse!