I've tried myself and failed, all I can say is that it uses some sort of RLE (run-length encoding). If someone can get the specs/format of the .scn or .scx file, I could send out the upgraded version of my program within a day or 2 of getting it. I'm also working with a 1-km resolution map of the world (huge) with elevations in meters, and over 150 terrain types (something like 933MB file). I will scale it down, and have a feature for cutting and pasting.
So, with file format of .scn and .scx, and further work which I can do on the super-map, you could open the universal world map, draw a cut-rectangle around whatever part of the world you want to make a new map out of, and paste it as a new file in AOK. It would have coastlines, deserts, trees, hills, mountains, etc...
If anyone can figure it out I am at amflinch@earthlink.net