After taking over as chairman of the UE Engine Technical Committee, Carmack handed all the finishing work on Quake's content to Romero, while he threw himself completely into the architectural design of the general-purpose engine.
Romero stood up, carried a can of Coke over to Carmack's desk.
"Take a look at this." Romero pointed toward his own computer screen. "In less than a week, the player community has already produced more than fifty high-quality multiplayer maps. One team is even trying to use our scripting language to rewrite the logic for a capture-the-flag mode."
Carmack lifted his gaze from the code and glanced at Romero.
"Opening up the tools was the right decision," Carmack replied in an even tone. "This proves that as long as you provide the right interfaces, the community's creativity is enormous."
Romero took a sip of Coke, dragged over a nearby chair, and sat down.
"I have to admit, a few months ago, I thought the two of us were going to tear the company apart over this engine." Romero looked at Carmack and spoke frankly. "You were always chasing faster rendering speed. Every time you changed the underlying pipeline, I had to redo the lighting and textures for my levels. Back then, I really felt like we couldn't keep working together anymore."
Carmack did not deny it.
In the middle stage of Quake's development, the conflict between the two of them over technical iteration and content stability had indeed reached its peak.
Carmack could not stand Romero's casual approach to code standards, while Romero was exhausted by Carmack's endless technical overhauls.
"But things are much better now." Romero continued, "That general-purpose engine framework Nakayama Takuya proposed really did solve the problem between us. You extracted the underlying structure and made it into an independent, stable