Soundeffects not working. Could not load ... asset

Question

So I'm trying to implement soundeffects whenever I click on an item. I've added a .wav sound to my Content folder. Then I typed the following code in the Game1 class constructor:

SoundEffect soundEffect;

After that I wrote the following code in the Initialize function:

soundEffect = Content.Load<SoundEffect>("Laser_Shoot25.xnb");

Finally, I wrote the following code in my clickFunction:

soundEffect.Play();

When I tried running it, it gave me the following error.

Could not load nameOfSoundFile asset.

I've looked on Google to see if someone else had this same problem, but none of those solutions seem to work for me. Does anyone know what else I'm supposed to do to make this work?

Answer 1

First thing that comes to mind is the possibility of you loading your assets before the Content object gets initialized. Please post the relevant code where you load your asset to know if this is the case (usually the initialize and LoadContent methods of your Game1 class).

The other possibility is the asset file format. I'm not up to date with Monogame as I stopped using it with version 3.2, but if things remain the same on this aspect; then for working with sounds and spritefonts you need to add the asset as an exported xnb file, created by using the actual XNA content pipeline.

I have a blog post that explains exactly how to do all of this, which can be found here.

First, you need to install XNA on your machine (in the same post, it explains how to do it if you have Windows 8 and/or Visual Studio 2012/2013).

Then, just follow the steps detailed on the post:

So, once we have this, let’s create a new Windows Game project (it has to be a game and not only a Content project as we will need to access the game output directory).

After having this done, we can add our sound effects/instances to the Content project by right clicking, selecting “Add existing item” and choosing it in the folder explorer.

Before continuing, make sure you set the properties of the sound as desired (in my case, I’ll be using a SoundEffect so I need to specify it in the Content Processor field):

All that remains is to add the xnb file to the Content folder of your Monogame project.