Does the preload SMAPI terminal act as the gameconsole?If you mean the console/terminal window that appears when launching the game through SMAPI, then yes, you would need to install that from https://smapi.io/.
In most other games i play I can press a button (usually tilde) to bring up a gameconsole where I can enter commands, for example, hide the entire UI or something like that. It also acts as an error log, or just a log in general sometimes, depending on the game.Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean.