I'm having problems with this program.Everything else is working except I can't get sound to come up.I moved the wave file to the Audio file.Save the XACT file to the same folder and I put  in the code.I got this error

Could not find file 'C:\Users\Gamesmaster\Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\VerticalShot\VerticalShot\bin\x86\Debug\audio\WaveBank.xwb'.

But if the main XACT audio file is in this folder wouldn't the Wave Bank be in the same folder?If anyone has an idea for a solution I'm all ears.

The XACT runtime requires XGS, XSB and XWB files which are created from the XAP during build - either through the XACT GUI, the xactbld.exe command line tool or the Content Pipelines XACT build task.

The XACT GUI usually builds these files into the folders specified in the XAP, which point to a relative sub folder and hence require some copy operations during build.

On the command line you can overwrite the paths specified in the XAP file to build into the proper debug or release directories.

To use the Content Pipeline (CP) the XAP needs to be within the content sub-project and the load paths in your game need to start with the Content base directory ("Content" in the default configuration), e.g. the above wave bank will be "Content\Audio\WaveBank.xwb".

Using the the CP is the easiest as it will rebuild the files when the XAP has been changed and the binaries are properly coypied without user interaction.

If I'm understanding you you think that the reason it's not working is because I don't have a Contents folder?I know that for most people the default for XNA  is that it will automatically create a contents folder but mine does not.But I know it can work without putting it into a contents folder because I've done this once  before and it worked.

I was thinking about it.Maybe it has something to do with me trying to port the xap file from another project.Are the xap files project specific?Or can you simply move them from one project to another using the content pipeline?

Gamesmaster3:

If I'm understanding you you think that the reason it's not working is because I don't have a Contents folder?I know that for most people the default for XNA  is that it will automatically create a contents folder but mine does not.But I know it can work without putting it into a contents folder because I've done this once  before and it worked.

Not directly, I only think it is the easiest way to deal with audio files in GS :)

Gamesmaster3:

I was thinking about it.Maybe it has something to do with me trying to port the xap file from another project.Are the xap files project specific?Or can you simply move them from one project to another using the content pipeline?

The XAP itself is pretty portable, the compiled binaries are not so (the XGS, XSB and XWB are version specifiy). What's still unmentioned is whether or not you build the XAP into the runtime binaries and if these are copied (in one way or another) into the debug/release folders. The XAP (and the waves it includes) is used only for authoring. Either hit F7 int he XACT UI or run "xactbld.exe <project.xap> ." from the command line to build the required files into the same directory (which then need to be copied into the projects output directory).