I’ve been working on this on and off for over a year now (having essentially restarted entirely in the latter half of 2012). At last it is finished. I give you a Windows Store DirectX C++ Sample Base. It’s something you could build a game on top of. It’s something you could build a sample on top of. It passes WACK testing (or did until I reverted to the default icons anyway) and runs properly on my Surface RT as well as my other x64-based computers. It handles rotation. Lets you choose a fixed back buffer size. Includes an audio engine class, a Texture2D class, and a RenderTarget2D class. Makes use of DirectXTK. Lets you do fancy things like mixing XAML and DirectX while still using multisampling. Has a custom settings pane with premade volume controls, a privacy settings pane (you need to supply the appropriate privacy policy and any other controls you need, if any), and even an about settings pane. Shows you the basics of using XInput. Shows you the basics of doing async in C++ using the ConcRT PPL Tasks library. And it even includes Shawn Hargreaves’ cat and a Cornflower Blue background!
I’d love to write more about it, but I’ve been burning the candle at both ends to try to finish it up before January ended. I made it just in time! The code is all very commented. Key things you’ll want to look at are App.xaml.cpp, DirectXPage.xaml.cpp, DirectXPage.xaml, and Game.cpp (which derives from DirectXBase, which you may also want to look at). Note that the descriptions of what functions do are all in the header (.H) files whereas the comments on how they do it tend to all be in the CPP files.
Let me know what you think if you try it out. If you have any problems or questions, let me know that too. I’ve created a thread over in the Off Topic forum in the XNA/DirectX forums to facilitate discussion and centralize questions and answers - Windows Store DirectX C++ Sample Base.
You can grab the sample here: BaseWin8Direct3DApp.zip . You need to be running Windows 8 and Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8 or Visual Studio 2012 Professional or above. I hope to start creating samples using this as a base to build on very soon. I’d be thrilled if others did the same. I’ll also try to include some posts about developing for the Windows Store in general (helpful links, good blogs, etc.) and about using C++. If you are new (or returning) to C++, I encourage you to check out the free (reg. req’d) eBook I wrote for SyncFusion last summer, C++ Succinctly - http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2012/09/07/c-succinctly-now-available.aspx . It has a 20 code samples that guide you through the important, tricky parts of C++.
Hopefully you will find it helpful!