Hi, my name is Fidel Viegas and I was born on the 2nd of November of 1977 in a country called Angola. Due to civil war going on in Angola, I moved to Portugal in 1984. I lived in Portugal until 1993. I then went back to Angola in 1993 and lived there until 1996. In 1996 I returned to Portugal and finished my Secondary School (A Level equivalent in UK) and went to live to London in 1997. I did a computer engineering degree in London and I am still living in London.

Well, that was my whole story. Now let's get into how I got into computer programming.

My first experience with computers happened in 1989, when I was 12 years of age. My mother gave me an Amstrad CPC 464 on christmas. I wanted the computer to play games, but unfortunately I couldn't find any games for it in Portugal. Actually, my uncle found one, which I don't recall the name, but I remember it was a war game. That was the only game I ever owned for the Amstrad CPC464. As you know, you get kind of tired of playing the same game over and over again. I was pretty much tired of my computer and the game as well. But, one day my uncle came over to my place and grabbed the Amstrad CPC user manual and typed a program that started playing music. From that day on, I changed my opinion regarding the Amstrad CPC464. I found that amazing and wanted to create my own music. So, that's when I started reading the Amstrad programming manual. I was learning the programming language that came with it (BASIC). Do you guys remember that? Oh yeah! I will never forget that. Well, like I said I was reading the manual and self-teaching myself how to program in BASIC. I came to a chapter where the example was a little puppet running from left to right. When I saw that I thought that that was amasing as well and immediately started thinking about the possibility of creating my own games. Anyway, the idea was good, but I didn't have the resources nor anyone to teach me how to program my own games. All I could do was write some programs to make physics calculations which I used in my lectures exercises. I could also write some guessing games. But that was about it. Well, not exactly. My good skills came into translating games from one platform to another. More precisely, translating games from the Sinclair Spectrum to the Amstrad CPC. It all came by chance. I had bought a magazine which came with the source code for a game. But the game was for the Spectrum 48k. Well, because I saw that it was written in BASIC, I thought that it could run on my Amstrad. Guess what? Loads of errors came out. I didn't just accept those errors. I read the magasine and found that the game was for the Spectrum 48k (Yeah, I was lazy to read it before). I thought, wait a minute, my cousin has got a Spectrum. Let me ask him for his programming manual. And so I did and started reading the Spectrum manual and found the differences between the Amstrad BASIC and the Spectrum BASIC. So, my experiment was now to find the equivalent keywords for my Amstrad. What a job, hein? Well, I was up for it. I started translating all the keywords. And found that most of the keywords differences were related to memory addressing and to displaying graphics on the screen. The graphics modes were more or less similar but with different keywords. Well, I spent about two months translating that game and luckily enough I had it running on the Amstrad CPC464. Wow!! You can't imagine my happiness. By the way, the game was a tennis game. I had one more game to play on my Amstrad. Yupi!!! From then on, all I did was translate games from the Spectrum (48k) to the Amstrad. I learnt a lot with that, but still couldn't program my own games. This experience all happened between 1989 and 1992 while I was in Portugal. When I went to Angola I didn't have the computer to play no more and forgot most of the stuff I had learned. But, luckily enough I managed to buy one from a friend. That was around 1994. At that time I was learning Pascal programming at Secondary School (or A Levels standard). Well, I got myself a PC, which I took from my father's office and started learning Quick BASIC and Turbo Pascal. Unfortunately, the PC I had (that was my first one) was a 8086. Can you imagine that? Well, I started learning Turbo Pacsal and started writing programs with it. Writing programs in Pascal was so much easier and clearer than Basic and so I started re-writing my old physics programs into Turbo Pascal. But, since I was studying Electronics as well, we were given an assignment to write a Pascal program to calculate the currents, voltages, resistances of amplifiers. (you know common-base, common-collector and common-emitter for those of you that studied Electronics). From then on, Turbo Pascal was my language of choice until I came to England. While at university, I heard of a language called C and another called C++. So I started teaching myself those two languages, beginning with C. At the same time, I found a book about another programming language called Java and started reading the three books in parallel. From all those languages, my favourite one was Java because of its pure object-oriented nature and its clean syntax. There are a couple of other languages that I have self-taught myself. Among them, are assembly language, python, tcl, scheme, c#, and many more. The ones I use most are C/C++, assembly, java and python. I also use Scheme for some of my artificial intelligence experiments.

Ok, now you know how I got into computer programming. As you know from what I have said above, I was studying Electronics as well as self-teaching myself computer programming. When I went to Angola in 1993, I had to choose the subjects that would allow me to get into university. Since I wanted to do Mechanical Engineering (to make my father proud of me), the only option I had was the course that had Electronic Studies. I wasn't very keen to learn that, but when I started, that was another world for me. And so my passion for Electronics was born. Hence, I gave up the idea of getting into Mechanical Engineering. Electronics was my second passion (computers being my first). It sort of became my first one since I couldn't create my own games. Anyway, since I got into Electronis, I started building my own kits. Amplifiers, etc... I also took a course on Electronics TV and Radio Repair. That was when I decided that I wanted to do a degree in Electronics Engineering. I was definitely going for that. But once I arrived in London and started my degree I found that I actually loved both computer programming and electronics, and so I started looking for a course that covered both. So Computer and Information Engineering was the course I ended up with. Anyway, I finished the course and decided that what I really wanted to do was computer programming. That was and still is my real passion. I love programming and I will always love programming. During my studies, I self-taugh myself computer graphics, computer games and artificial intelligence. Now, I want to pass all that knowledge to you guys because I know it isn't easy to get where I am now. It definitely isn't. But, it was with great effort and patience that I got there. Now I know how a game works. I wish I could have learnt this when I was 12. I would have written loads of games for my old Amstrad. Anyway, it is never too late to learn a new thing. Apart from computer programming I also know how to do film editing. Well, I kind of worked on three short films. The first one I worked as an Actor and a second camera assistant. The second one, I just did the 'making of' documentary. The third one, I did the editing. Besides that I did loads of wedding films, which was a great experience. Now, I want to focus on games. More precisely, I want to focus on Artificial Inteligence for games. That is my greatest passion of all and that is what I do on my spare time. Create creatures that can live and act inside the computer is something that has always amused me and I know that it is too for a lot of you reading my web site.

Well, I think you are kind of bored with all this story, right?

I hope you enjoy my site and learn a lot from me. Cause that is what I want. To pass my knowledge to those who need it. It is easier when you have someone that can show you the way.

Anyway, all the best

Fidel