The alpha map is 256*256 blocks, which is MUCH smaller than the modern map. You could add a buffer of empty blocks around it, though, since it is the same format.
The other issue is that the alpha map uses different indexes than the new map. Think of the map as a giant color-by-number. So, as a simplified for example, the current map has "3" everywhere it wants a grass tile, whereas the old map has a "2". The end result would be the basic shape of the map being right, but no tile or object would be correct (or very few would be). Grass would be snow (or something else), walls would be trees, trees would be barrels, etc. You could solve this problem very easily by going through, making a list of all the incorrect indexes, and then converting the old map's indexes to the new ones through a simple translation program.
Finally, there could be an issue with the way underground parts of the map worked back then. I noticed, while running around on it, that they used many more "underground" areas (below the map) than the modern map, and the client displayed them very differently. I have no idea how things would behave with the same map in the modern client.
In the end, though, you could never distribute such a map, since that would be a copyright violation.
Oh, and nobody ever made a client for viewing it. I made a simple program that turned it into an image, just to verify the format, but that is it. There are people who are working on an alpha emulator that works with the alpha map, though, and I wrote a simple program that allowed you to override the connection settings so that you could force the alpha client to connect to a non-OSI server.
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