Control It!

This mod allows to control network traffic and some visual appearance to the main menu.

When the game is started a lot of network traffic between the game and Valve (Steam) and Paradox occurs. Most of it is necessary and also done asynchronous but still requires some processing time hence cost to load time, also dependent of your network connectivity. Furthermore during gameplay, some network traffic also occurs in terms of telemetry sent.

This mod enables to restrict some of the network traffic in the game; news, advertising, user generated content details and telemetry. Besides that you can also use this mod to customize the visual appearance of the main menu. Personally I like the background pictures and have been annoyed by the news, account, DLC and workshop panel blocking most of my view on the main menu. This can also be changed. Settings are separated between the technical network traffic restrictions and the visual appearance so you can customize exactly how you want it.

Vanilla game occasionally makes a request for every single User Generated Content (UGC) you have subscribed to – that is maps, assets, mods and so on. It does that to get some extra information – but the only one displayed in Content Manager is actually the authors name. All other information is already available without requesting these details. These requests can be restricted while loading the game and by default instead executed when browsing Content Manager in-game. This can actually also be deactivated which shouldn’t cause problems for a normal user, but modders and asset creators should be aware that this disable the option for updating User Generated Content in the current session. You can always switch this on/off between game sessions.

Dependent of how many User Generated Contents you have subscribed to, you can save seconds and in some cases even minutes starting the game.

Vanilla game collects and sends a lot of telemetry. When the game is started, it sends information about hardware/software, DLC’s and language. In-game it sends information about placed buildings, city stats, milestones, radio channels and more. These can be restricted.

It is also possible to log all telemetry entries to file to see for yourself. This can be done both with or without restricting telemetry. The file(s) are saved in a "Telemetry"-folder in your Cities: Skylines root-directory.

Thank you to the amazing modding community and especially SamsamTS, TPB, boformer and BloodyPenguin for releasing the source code of their great mods so we can all be inspired.

Subscribe to the mod and in Options select what network traffic to restrict and any changes to the appearance of the Main Manu. You will have to restart the game for network traffic restrictions to take effect.

This mod does use patching technique with the Harmony library[github.com] provided by the Harmony dependency mod. It does however not alter game save files in any way and can be disabled or unsubscribed safely at any time.

• None.

The source code is available here[github.com]

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