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Singing Walter is a visualization plug-in for Winamp.

This plug-in REQUIRES that you have Half-Life loaded on your machine.  This plug-in also REQUIRES a video card that supports OpenGL.

The Singing Walter plug-in will move it's mouth in sync with whatever music or sound files are being played by the Winamp player. You can select from 4 different scientist models, the guard (Barney) or the G-man. You can adjust the size of the window used to render the model (the smaller size is less CPU intensive). You can adjust the background color and you can adjust the mouth sensitivity.

Question #1: I have the retail verion of Counter-Strike.  When I run the Singing Walter plug-in, it says "Error opening registry key for Half-Life InstallPath".  What do I do?

Answer #1: There is a file in the Winamp\Plugins folder called walter.ini.  You can modify this file with Notepad to add a line that will bypass reading the Windows Registry.  Add the following line to the walter.ini file...

halflife_dir=C:\SIERRA\Counter-Strike

...replacing C:\SIERRA\Counter-Strike with whereever you installed Counter-Strike on your machine. 

Question #2: I have the retail verion of Blue Shift.  When I run the Singing Walter plug-in, it says "Error opening registry key for Half-Life InstallPath".  What do I do?

Answer #2: I haven't tested this with the retail version of Blue Shift.  See question #1 above and use the directory where you installed Blue Shift to see if that works.

Question #3: I have the single player verion of Half-Life.  When I run the Singing Walter plug-in, it says "Error opening registry key for Half-Life InstallPath".  What do I do?

Answer #3: There is a file in the Winamp\Plugins folder called walter.ini.  You can modify this file with Notepad to add a line that will bypass reading the Windows Registry.  Add the following line to the walter.ini file...

halflife_dir=C:\SIERRA\Half-Life

...replacing C:\SIERRA\Half-Life with whereever you installed Half-Life on your machine.  The Half-Life directory on your machine will be the one where hl.exe is located.

Question #4: When I am playing music with the Singing Walter plug-in, it moves it's mouth on stuff other than when the singer is singing words.  How do I set it up so that it only moves it's mouth when it hears "words" and not during "music"?

Answer #4: You can't.  The plug-in only monitors the level of sound, not what's actually being played.  It doesn't know the difference between words, drum beats, clapping, explosions, or any other sound that might be played by Winamp.  To be able to distinguish words from the rest of the music would require VERY advanced DSP (digital signal processor) algorithms which I don't have.  Anytime it hears ANY sounds, it will move it's mouth.

Question #5: On some songs Walter will move his mouth just fine, but on other songs, he will hardly move his mouth at all.  What's wrong?

Answer #5: Walter will move his mouth based on the level (volume) of the sound being played.  This volume is the level that the sound was recorded at, not the volume that you play back the sound at (i.e. turning up the volume on your speakers won't make any difference).  You can adjust the Mouth Scale in the plug-in Preferences (Visualization->Configure plug-in) to make the mouth a little more sensitive to low levels.  If you have the Mouth Scale set to the max value and it still isn't moving the mouth much, there isn't anything more you can do.

Downloading the Singing Walter plugin:

I am using a zip file for the plugin.

Download the zip file and unzip it to your Winamp\Plugins folder. There is an enclosed ReadMe.txt file with information on setting up and starting the plugin.

Download the Singing Walter Winamp plugin - version 1.0
Download the Source code to the Singing Walter Winamp plugin (version 1.0)