so another question (this one involves walking with my riolu)
if i walk my riolu 256 to have +1 friendship (say im on cycling road), will it have +1 every 256 steps?
my main thing here is: if someone could explain how walking friendships work, that'd be great
Ah yeah. For my Soulsilver run, I wanted to have a ready team from the start, so I had my cousin transfer some eggs on the very beginning. Growlithe, Dratini and Eevee. I wanted Eevee to evolve into Umbreon so I did the same thing you want to do.
All caught or hatched Pokemon start at friendship level of 70. So if you leveled your Pokemon or lost some battles consider it to have 70, +/- 15 points.
I'd order to evolve, it needs to have a value of 220 or higher. There are several places where you can check if you're getting close to it (
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Friendship ) (look where it says location, somewhere after the middle of the page).
Now the math. Say your Riolu has a value of 70. It probably has somewhere around 70. To reach 220 you need to add 150. Multiply it with number of footsteps you need to make for only one point, thats 150 * 256, thats 38400. So you need to make a total of 38,400 steps, then you can evolve it. Once you're sure you passed the needed amount of steps/friendship value, go battle and level your Riolu up.
Soulsilver: I was in the first town/village, so I counted how many footsteps were in one circle around the town, and figured out how many I needed to do to reach the needed number. At some point I lose the count so I'd just walk around while watching TV or whatever.
Platinum: When I left some of my Pokemon in the day care, and wanted to evolve it fast; there is a place in Sinnoh, Fuego Ironworks, and if you stick the buttons correctly, on the right place in the room, you can make the character run automatically, without actually touching the console. It requires some messing around but its worth it. Shiny Beldum was just one of the many Pokemon I leveled to 100 using this method. Keep in mind though, to:
1. Have your Nintendo charged all the time while doing this.
2. Your Pokemon wont gain any EVs while being leveld up this way. But you can deal with this in different ways, e.g. deal with the EVs for the first 20-30 levels, then put it in day care. There is a limit for EVs anyway.
tldr: Just walk around and make 38,400 footsteps, or make it 40,000 to be sure, and make sure it doesnt faint in the process, eat herbs and other stuff that will lower the friendship value.
Peace!