For some reason the internet paints them as rivals, or that Carmack was the one who succeeded (continuing with ID and now at FB) and Romero faded away and was never really technical (and works at a gas station).
That's a misconception. In fact Romero made a lot of games entirely by himself and has been coding throughout his career.
Check out his programming credits: https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,8...
I don't know if they've reconciled in recent years and I've never heard about Romero working at a gas station. Any source for that?
https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...
There's no basis for the claim he's working at a gas station. He runs a game development company in Ireland.
Q: Are you in touch with the original DOOM® team?
A: Yes, we talk from time to time. I see Adrian a fair bit since he has a place here in Ireland (The Heritage in Killenard). I also talk with Tom (Hall) and American (McGee) every once in a while. I’m in contact with John where there’s something specific that we both have interest in.
Reading between the lines: no, they're not friends.
They are different types of people, and they both are probably adults at this point, at least sufficiently to acknowledge that their common ground is having a beer and discussing cool new stuff once in a while rather than the style of friendship which would involve being willing to take a bullet for one another. If their interests intersect then they can talk and be excited but those points are too fewer to call it a deep friendship. It is mutual appreciation of technology and cool stuff.
I would not read into it that they are unfriendly though, just that the type of friendship is bounded by interests and passions and I doubt either one has hard feelings about the past.
Carmack isn't constantly humping the successes of his distant past trying to use them to generate hype and interest in himself, even though he's been largely responsible for them.
Romero just seems like a slacker, riding on the coattails of those early shared successes, milking the association dry.
Look I enjoy a good Daikatana joke like any other, but while Carmack was the technical wizard, Romero was every bit as important in regards to getting those games to pop with the character and attention to detail -- maybe more than any other person at ID at the time.
He deserves his props too, and I think its awesome he's still so engaged with these games and helping keeping them going after all these years.