Rainwave 101 - R3 Edition
With a new version of Rainwave.cc, come a new version of the help guide. First off, major thanks goes to jfinalfunk who did most (all) the work that went into this guide, again. I'm mostly cross-posting this here for greater google visibility (we hope (didn't work too well last time). So with no further ado, on with the guide.
Many of you may be familiar with my walkthrough of Rainwave basics built in the good ole R2 days. Well, since R3 has significantly mixed things up, that particular post is not entirely pertinent anymore. Without further ado, some good things to know about Rainwave...
1) Help! I recommend starting with the button, near the top-right corner of the screen. In fact, some helpful purple tips should have popped up the first time you visited the page at all, and given you a few starting instructions, but just in case you missed those, you can always click help again, to review and get a few other tips on most of the common R3 interface functions. That said, if you ignored the help tips or prefer reading a forum based walkthrough...
2) Stations! There are 3: Rainwave is dedicated to Video Game Soundtracks. OCR Radio is... OverClocked Remix Radio. And Mixwave features a lot of video game remixes, covers, and VG inspired music, as well as some independent music (SOcean255's description here). We recommend checking out each channel! They're all full of awesome. Just hover over the 'Rainwave' banner in the top left corner to see your choices, and click to go where you want to.
3) Tune in! The easiest way is to click the 'Download m3u' (), but the three little icons will work, too (all 4 links give you the same file). The m3u will play the music stream of your choice in a compatible media player. (FYI: Window's Media Player and iTunes are not compatible. Hint: Look at those three little icons again...)
4) Vote! You can vote for what you want to hear next! Yeah, it's cool. We know :). Once the music is playing, wait a short while and R3 will recognize you (at the worst, this will happen at a song change) When the 'Download m3u' link changes to 'Tuned In', you have been detected and can start interacting with the site. You can vote on the next song to play in the Election section of the front page. Just click on the title of the one you want to hear next. If you see the title bar animate or change color slightly, you've done it right. The song with the most votes wins!
5) Stations! Did I mention? We have 3. Go on, try a different one out. Yeah, right now. I'll be here when you get back :).
6) Rating! OK, so you're on a roll now. You agree that R3 is pretty cool *cough*wicked awesome!*cough* and you wanna stick around... Sign up! Free of charge! You can go to the forums, or use the 'Register' link on the front page. Once you're signed in, re-download the m3u, wait for 'Tuned In' status, and you can start rating the music! You personal ratings will be stored in your account, and added to the site-wide average ratings (the small green line in the rating bar, also found numerically by clicking on the album name and looking at the album detail page). Just hover over that little slanted bar () to make your rating. As you rate songs, the average rating you give to songs in each album will set that album's rating for you in the playlist.
7) Favourites! In addition to giving ratings, you can also mark songs and albums as 'favourites' by clicking in the little box to the right of the ratings bar (). There are planned future features that will allow you to do cool things like filter your playlist by favourites, or auto-request a random favourite song, so tag early and tag often. Of course, there is nothing stopping you from re-appropriating the favourites indicator for other purposes (i.e. flagging albums with unrated content), if that's what floats your boat. Note that, unlike ratings, you do not need to listen to a song to mark is as a favorite. You can mark any song a favorite, at any time, straight in the playlist.
8) Requesting! Now that you're registered, you can also request songs from the playlist! Dig into an album and click the next to the song you'd like to hear. Now you can sit back and wait for your request to get into an election (yes, it still needs to be voted in to be played), or you can track how close it is in the...
9) Request Queue! Open the request tab to see your current requests. There will be a list of "My Requests" on the left, and the "Request Line" on the right. Look at your position in line. As elections proceed, you will get closer to the top. Eventually your top request will get sucked into an election and you can vote it in like any other song election. If you find a different song you'd rather request first, find it in the playlist and click the . In the request tab, you will now be able to re-arrange your requests by drag-and-drop. Note that you can request songs that are currently unavailable and still have a place in the request line. However, if you wait too long to put a valid song in your queue, your request can expire. If you request expires (or if your request makes it to the front of the line and goes to election), you get shifted to the end of the line and must wait your turn for your next (hopefully valid) requested song to be pulled into an election. Note that you can also delete songs out of your request queue with the little 'x'.
10) Color Coding! A "Normal" election will feature 3 songs with a blue header. There is nothing special going on here and the song with the most votes wins. In the case of a tie, Rainwave will select the winner at random. Sometimes, the election will include a requested song, which will have a cyan header. As a matter of courtesy, we ask that you consider voting for other users' requests, but the choice is always yours. On occasion, you will see a yellow header in an election. This signifies that the song in question conflicts with a request another user has made. Conflicts will be explained in detail another day, but for now suffice it to say that if you vote in this song, someone will lose the chance to hear their request for a few hours in the immediate future. Friends don't let friends vote for conflicts.
And that's a good time for a break. I recommend going back to the main interface and getting familiar with all of the above. It's OK, I'll wait.
...
Back already? OK, let's continue...
11) Support. The fastest way to get technical support (free! 24 hours...ish) is the chat room. Just click the 'chat' button in the main window and say 'hi'. There's usually a few (if not a lot) of friendly people there that can help you out. Also, feel free to post a question on the forums (Help Area). If you're so inclined, there's even a place for you to introduce yourself...
12) Cooldown. Previously known as "Off-Air" or "OA", but no longer. After a song plays, it becomes unavailable for a while ("goes into cooldown"), to keep the radio from getting repetitive. The song's album gets puts on cooldown too, but not as long. Finally, closely related content (i.e. content in the song's "Cooldown Group") from other albums also gets cooldown, but only for 20 minutes. How long songs and albums go cool for is a function of the songs site-wide rating. Higher rated material becomes available sooner. FYI: Albums currently on cooldown hide at the bottom of the playlist. R2 Full explanation. << This explanation will be updated for R3 in the near future...
13) History. You were tuned in for the last 10 minutes, but not watching the site. One of those songs was really jumping, but you weren't looking at the site, so you missed the name. Try looking at history! In the preferences tab, there is a check box with the title "Show History". This will bring the last 3 songs played into the timeline panel on the left side of the screen. If you are a registered user, you will even be able to rate songs in history, if you missed them while they were actively playing.
14) Election Results. While we're in the preferences tab, look up a line to see "Show Election Results". Checking this box will add some more boxes to the timeline panel, showing the results of the last election. Instead of showing the length of each song (as in the election), you will see the number of votes each song received, with the winning song (that should now be playing) at the top of the list.
15) Playlist. You've probably already seen and explored this area... Your hub for finding the music you want to hear. As alluded to before, the top of the playlist is full of available music, the bottom (shaded) section is unavailable (on Cooldown). Clicking on an album shows Album Detail page. Here you can see some stats about the album, including the distribution of ratings it has been given, how many times it has been requested, and a number of other fun details. As mentioned before, clicking the 'R' will put a song into your request queue, viewable in the 'Requests' tab. You can also see the vital stats of the songs in the album.
16) Stat Tracking. After you register, all your Rainwave activity performed under your username is tracked. This includes:
Active Time (time you have been tuned in, and voting for / rating songs)
Votes to date
Requests to date
Total number of content Ratings
Total number of Rating Changes
Others :ninja:
Rainwave also tracks the average song and album rating for all content you have rated. To see this (and more!), open the... oh wait. That was R2... Well, stay tuned and very soon you will be able to see your stats in new and wonderful ways! :)
And that wraps us up for now! If you have any questions, feel free to reply to this thread, or swing by the chat room for fastest response. There are a lot of nuances to Rainwave which have not been discussed in detail here. This topic will be expanded in the future to cover other aspects of the site, and to branch into new features as they are developed. Cheers!