By Zinnia Khan and Hannah Geraghty, Staff Writers
// Throughout September, the Acalanes Coding Club worked together to create their own app, called “CR Soundboard.”
The app is a soundboard app, similar to Garageband or other sound loop-creating software. However, instead of allowing users to create music, the app provides a selection of sounds that can be put together for Clash Royale character emotes.
“[We] have a wide variety [of sounds] based on the characters, and basically what we did was we took those different emotes and sounds and decided to develop a soundboard using them, so you can make ‘music’ using the sounds. You can create loops to make beats,” Coding Club Vice President and senior Krishna Ram said.
Using an app design tool called “Figma,” the club was able to build its product in only a month.
“First, we designed it on this design tool called Figma, so we designed the entire interface and everything, and all of the club members participated in that … then we actually started developing it, [which took] about a week, which was mostly Andrew and I but everybody chipped in. We got all the audio files and images we could, and then we started building the interface to the graphic design we created,” Coding Club Secretary and senior Harris Kamran said.
The club chose to create a Clash Royale-themed soundboard because all of the members enjoy playing Clash Royale outside of school.
“Everyone at our club plays the game Clash Royale, and so it’s very easy and accessible for them to understand what we’re doing,” Coding Club Treasurer and senior Isaac Wang said.
The Coding Club designed the app intending to develop their coding skills while still working on something fun. Therefore, the app is not intended to be serious, but it does demonstrate the club’s design skill with colorful graphics and easy-to-interpret instructions.
“It’s just for fun. You have an emote, and you … press it. You can do as many as you want. And you can turn it in, and it cycles or a sequence,” Coding Club President and senior Andrew Zheng said.
Now that its app has launched, the club hopes to improve its product by going back to fix bugs and improve the software.
“We definitely want to tie up some loose ends for this app, make sure everything is running smoothly… as the coding club we want to venture out to new projects, we just want to help our members, and teach them the process of how to create an app,” Ram said.
The app has experienced success on the app store, with over 200 downloads in the first month it has been released alone. CR Soundboard also has a conversion rate of 75-80 percent, which means that of all the people viewing the app, 75-80 percent of them downloaded it.
“We have a five star rating with 13 reviews and we have five stars on the app store,” Ram said.
CR Soundboard has peaked high in multiple categories on the app store’s game listings.
“We peaked at number two in the music and games category, and number seven on card games … we’re number six on magazines and newspapers,” Kamran said.
In addition to improving the software on their app, the Coding Club also plans to move beyond gaming in terms of inspiration for their coding.
“[Spanish teacher] Mr. Shaw approached us, so we’re making a … quiz game which helps you learn the verb forms,” Kamran said.
The Coding Club encourages the Acalanes community to support their hard work by downloading their app by searching uo “CR Soundboard” on the app store.
Graphic by Gabi Gruber, Online Editor-In-Chief