I personally recommend to write plugins for PRISM with PHP, because it's really easy, and it has already many plugin examples pre-made for you to work with.
If you want to program with C++/C#, you will need Visual Studio C++ Express or Visual Studio C# Express.
If you want to program with Java, you will need Netbeans or Eclipse.
And if you use the PHP option then all you need is Notepad. If you're new to PHP then Netbeans for PHP is a good free solution.
The 3d text is a really good idea. It should be fairly easy to do for the devs since such a feature already exists with names above cars.
Teleporting isn't a great idea as such though. It would allow server owners to exploit the system and encourage cheating in races. An idea would be to teleport a player and perhaps freeze them for a few seconds so they can't drive away, which should prevent cheating.
It's nice to see that an old LFS player comes back to play this wonderful game.
While reading your post I was expecting you to say that you got crashed into more and turn it into a negative one.
I also agree that LFS is a really wonderful game, even if we don't ever get any more updates. The price that I paid for so much game-play time was so worth it.
After all I haven't played any other game longer than LFS...
Apps for Android: MoboPlayer - Best video player ever. Played AVI movies on my X8 without any lag on a low-end device. Temple Run - Extremely addictive game, as seen on iOS. Sygic Navigation - Really nice GPS application. Allows you to download maps of many countries. Data connection not required for use, only for map downloading. Also has PC program to download maps.